Making Your Mind Up - I loved this book! (Making Your Mind Up - Jill Mansell)

Name: kingfisher111

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Product:	Making Your Mind Up - Jill Mansell
Date:	23/10/06 (219 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An enjoyable light read

Disadvantages: none

I have read many books by Jill Mansell and I have to say that I would rate 'Making Your Mind Up', which is her latest one, as one of her best. If you are not familiar with Jill Mansell, I think I would say that her novels fall into the category of 'chic lit' although I'm never quite sure exactly what that is! My own definition tends to be light modern fiction.

Well Jill Mansell seems incredibly good at this and all her novels are very accessible and easy to read. I think that one of the most important things that influence whether you enjoy the book are the characters - you have to like them and you have to care what happens to them (and I would say this is the same whether you are reading the greatest classic or the latest chic lit). I definitely liked most of the characters in this book.

The plot also has to be believable and not too complicated. This story moves along at a good pace with the main plot being interwoven with lots of little sub plots along the way.

I will just give a brief outline of the story. The central character is Lottie who is a single mother with two young children. Lottie has hardly had a love life to speak of for years, until she meets Tyler Klein her new boss. Tyler is everything she could wish for and more but there is just one small problem (well two small problems)...Lottie's children. Nat and Ruby take an instant dislike to their Mum's new boyfriend, and put so many obstacles in their way that it makes it impossible for her to carry on seeing him.

On to the scene comes Seb. He's fun, good looking and seems crazy about Lottie. What's more, the children love him so the only option seems to be to start seeing him. He's nice but he's not Tyler!

Anyway the book catalogues the events in Lottie's life and how things are never as straightforward as they seem until eventually things reach a crisis and one hero emerges. I won't say any more but it is the sort of plot that keeps you in anguish because it doesn't always go the way you want it to.

Lottie is a great character and you do really start to care what happens to her. She is strong, funny and caring. Her character is further developed through all the other characters in the book, each who have their own strand of the story to follow - Lottie's friend Cressida for whom it looks as if she has found love at last; her children Nat and Ruby and her attempts to do the best for them; her ex husband Mario (who Lottie constantly tries to keep on the straight and narrow) and most poignant of all is her relationship with her old boss Freddie, who having discovered that life is not going to be as long as he anticipated sets out on a mission, with Lottie's, help to find and make amends with significant people from the past!

At just over four hundred pages long this is a very good read. I like Jill Mansell's style which is generally light and humourous, but also deals with more serious aspects like divorce and illness. The chapters are fairly short which I like beacause you can 'just read the next chapter' fairly easily and you don't have to work too hard to enjoy it! It's a very enjoyable novel!

If this appeals to you, it is published by Hodder Headline and has a RRP of £6.99 for the paperback version. Having said that I bought mine in Tesco for a lot less!

Summary: You can make your own mind up but I loved this book!