Review: Where Have All the Boys Gone?

Where Have All the Boys Gone? by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Pleasant, if slightly dated romantic comedy in the Katie Fforde school.

Katie works in PR in London, she, her best friend Louise and her boss Olivia all bemoan the lack of decent men in London. After being mugged in Central London Katie applies for a job doing the PR for Fairlish Forestry Commission in the Highlands of Scotland, despite having previously only done PR for things like make-up and ice-cream.

Although her boss at the Forestry Commission Harry is grumpy and looks like a younger Gordon Brown (see what I mean about dated? FYI, Gordon Brown was an MP and Prime Minister between 2007 and 2010), the amazing thing about Fairlish is the abundance of men, 16 men to every woman they say, including her boss' arch enemy, newspaperman Iain.

Harry is trying to prevent a local businessman cutting down the beautiful forests to build yet another golf course and he needs Katie's assistance. Cue much hilarity, references to painting men's bottoms blue (in Braveheart style), local radio shows, and many quaint Scottish characters. This is clearly one of Jenny Colgan's earlier novels, the humour feels a little forced, the characters a bit too quirky, as if she's trying too hard compared with something like The Bookshop on the Shore. Nevertheless, if you like the idea of our plucky heroine organising a ball for 500 people in the Laird's crumbling mansion to raise awareness of the cause, including celebrities such as Ewan McGregor and Richard and Judy (big daytime TV hosts back in the day) then this light-hearted romance could be right up your street (or glen, since this is the Highlands).

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