Review: The Break

The Break by Marian Keyes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half, might even be five stars!

Marian Keyes was the writer of my thirties. Books like Watermelon and Rachel's Holiday created a whole new genre for me, Irish chicklit with a twist. When I saw this on NetGalley I had to request it, for the sake of my thirties but I had this little pit of dread in my stomach, what if it was the same as the stuff I read 20 years ago? I needn't have worried, this is still my Marian Keyes, just her heroines have a whole load more baggage and years.

Amy (44) has been married to Hugh (46) for a long time. A modern family they both work, they have three 'daughters': Neeve is Amy's from a short-lived previous marriage; Kiara is their daughter; and Sofie, who is actually Amy's brother's daughter but Amy and Hugh unofficially adopted her after his relationship with her mother imploded and poor Sofie fell through the cracks. Amy spends two days a week in London in her PR job, the rest of the time she is in Dublin with four siblings and a father with Alzheimer's. This is modern living: complicated relationships; remarriages; aged parents; twenty-something children living at home; two adults with good jobs and yet money problems; sibling rivalries; and professional angst. But overall, Amy and Hugh are happy, they are each other's best friends, they complete each other's sentences, until Hugh announces he wants a six month break in South East Asia to 'find himself'. Trouble is, no matter what her friends and family want her to, Amy doesn't hate Hugh, heck she even sympathises with him (when she isn't swearing at him or begging him to stay).

When stalking Hugh on Facebook, Amy finds incriminating photos of him with a young woman and suddenly all bets are off.

This is hallmark Marian Keyes full of "rides" and wacky family members, yet it also spoke to me personally on a deeper level about the doldrums we fall into in long marriages, how we swap romantic love for a kind of best friends love and the lies we tell ourselves about our feelings and our actions. It made me want to go home (I was working abroad at the time) and make mad passionate love to my husband and tell him how much I do love him and appreciate him.

Just like the other Marian Keyes books I've read no-one is entirely good or bad and people aren't always what they seem.

Absolutely loved it!

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Bumped for release.

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