Lessons in Life: A funny, fabulous read from Julie Houston by Julie HoustonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the second in a series, I haven't read the first book (I've started it but not finished), but it can be read as a standalone. I also note that there is a third book (at least) in the offing.
Robyn Allen is a former West End dancer who tore her ACL and is now back at home in Beddingfield as a supply teacher. She had been seeing Fabien Carrington, an aristocratic high-flying defence criminal lawyer, but they split up and she had a brief affair with the head teacher at the school where she works.
Robyn's older sister Jess runs a care home at Hudson House, although her ambition has always been to be a chef, a teenage pregnancy put paid to those ambitions, although she has recently won a cooking competition.
Robyn's youngest sister Sorrel is still at school, Robyn's school in fact, and is seeing a young man from a troubled family who may be involved in County Lines.
Lisa, Robyn's mother, is adopted. She is of half-Indian and half-English heritage but doesn't know much more because her adoptive parents were secretive and also ashamed of Lisa's mixed heritage. Lisa has been a single mother since she was a teenager, although the girls' father is still in the picture and has supported Lisa financially. He's a semi-famous musician who prefers life on the road to domesticity. Lisa has suffered from Porphyria for most of her adult life, which has left her weak and subject to bouts of being bedridden, but recently a new treatment has given her a new lease of life.
Interspersed with the narrative about Lisa and her three daughters is an historical narrative involving Eloise Hudson, daughter of a wealthy manufacturer, who used to love at Hudson House as a child and is now a resident suffering from dementia.
If you've read any previous Julie Houston novels, particularly the Westenbury books, then this is very familiar. Multiple stories, multiple protagonists, several strands left unfinished for the next book, on-again, off-again relationships, County Lines, etc. For me, I wasn't really invested in any of the characters enough and every time I did start to be engaged we would abruptly switch to the 1960s and I would lose the thread again.
Overall, this felt very much like a middle book, it sort of ended abruptly with new beginnings in the offing for most of the Allen family, but how long that will last is anyone's guess.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
Available on Kindle Unlimited.
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