Having had some hit-and-miss experiences with Jill Mansell books in the past, I was in two minds about whether to buy this one as while I've enjoyed some of her work, I've found others boring or tedious. As it happens, I was in Sainsburys trying to take advantage of a 2 for £7 offer and having found one book that I definitely wanted to buy, I was scouring the limited selection on the shelves for another to complete the offer as that book would have worked out quite expensive on its own. Needless to say, this was the only book that I felt I might enjoy so into the basket it went and I crossed my fingers that it would turn out to be one of her better books.

PLOT
Ellie and Jamie are the perfect couple and Ellie is blissfully happy in their marriage. That is, until tragedy strikes and she's forced to confront life without him. Faced with the need to move house and start life afresh, will Ellie be able to start again? Zach thinks that he's found the girl of his dreams but is she as out of reach as she seems?

MY THOUGHTS
As you can probably tell from my very short synopsis in the previous paragraph, there's not a lot of plot to speak of. Jamie's death happens very early on in the plot but we don't actually follow Ellie through the grieving process as you might have expected would happen in a plot like this. Instead, we meet both Ellie and Jamie before the tragedy happens but after his death is confirmed, the story skips forward by quite some margin and although Ellie is definitely still grieving for her husband, it's obvious that some time has passed since the accident. Because of this, the focus is on Ellie rebuilding her life - leaving the home they shared, finding a new job and making new friends.

Both Ellie and Zach were likeable and down-to-earth characters and Ellie's methods of dealing with her grief seemed realistic too. That said, they didn't make for particularly fascinating characters though and had it not been for the introduction of Roo, I think that getting through the book could have been quite tedious. Roo is a character that Ellie meets during her new start and she's a much stronger and more lively character than them and really starts to liven things up. That is, until she undergoes a bizarre personality change that isn't even remotely in keeping with the character that she's been up until this point and which frankly, I thought let things down. I had started to find the book quite enjoyable and not as slow and tedious as I thought it was going to be after the first few chapters but this was a bit of a stretch to get my head around and just seemed weird. Another good character is Tony (Ellie's father-in-law) who like Roo, has a side-story of his own going on alongside Ellie's and Zach's.

OVERALL VERDICT?
All in all, it was a decent enough read - nothing ground breaking but a perfectly acceptable book to read in the bath or on the bus. If I'm being entirely honest, I wouldn't recommend that you rush out and buy as I've certainly read better and more riveting books but if you're a fan of Jill Mansell you'll probably enjoy it.