Review: Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?

Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash? by Kristen Bailey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars. Although TBH I think I knocked off half a star because it didn't go the way I wanted it to go.

This is a series about the five (I think) Callaghan sisters who are all at one stage or another of being a woman/relationships. So the eldest, Meg, is married with children and living oop North with her husband Danny. The second daughter Emma is recently divorced with children. They have each had their own books which I very much enjoyed. This book is about Beth, who I assume is the middle daughter. At the start of the book she and her boyfriend Will are about to have their first baby, Joe.

Beth and Joe (from my jaded 50+ POV) are like perpetual students, they love gigs and mix tapes and festivals etc. Their flat is a bit of a dump and they love nothing more than binging a Netflix boxset. Of course as anyone knows, that all comes to a grinding halt when you have a baby.

Beth is dealing with the changes to her body, a lack of social life, Will working all hours, and all the other mothers from her NCT classes seeming to glide effortlessly around in lulu melon leggings with adorable babies while Beth is still hiding out in elasticated men's trackies and an old concert t-shirt.

Something happens, it's in the blurb but it feels spoilery so I won't say what. Because I have read the other books I expected it to happen much earlier in this book than it did.

If this were a schmaltzy Hallmark movie with a message I guess the message would be along the lines of 'Be kind to yourself, others see something completely different to what you see when you look in the mirror. Be kind to others because sometimes they are going through something worse.'

I enjoyed this, read it in a day, but I didn't love it in the same way as I loved Emma's book.

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