This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Reviewed by Susan Lobban
The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the birds are chirruping and Charlie is dead. Claire Byrne’s life is over when she hears of her husband’s death, but the world keeps moving on regardless.
In the Byrne’s marriage there was only room for one man and one writer, both were Charlie, so Claire sidelined her own writing ambitions. Now she must start over and find herself again. Claire had thought that she was set for life, but now she must re-immerse herself in the Manhattan dating pool.
In order to find love and happiness once more, she must set her own rules, however scary that may be!
I love all things New York and am a big fan of the Real Housewives of NY, which the author Carole Radziwill is a part of. I even remember episodes of her discussing writing this particular book. Carole lost her own husband a few years ago and chronicled this in her memoir. So, when she turned her hand to fiction, I was eager to see what she would produce.
The tag line is: ‘If you had already found your Mr Right, how hard would it be to find a second?' This is misleading, as you would expect the main character to be inconsolable and unable to function without their other half (at least for a while). Claire is not the typical widow as she barely misses a beat and I got no sense that she was distraught or even grieving.
I found neither Claire of Charlie to be likeable and their relationship was barely a marriage. Her husband is not long buried before Claire is imagining life with potential new boyfriends. The only problem being the men she starts to date have no potential!The book’s premise had a lot of promise, but the humour was too dark for my tastes. I found nothing funny in the situations or in the characters Claire meets. I don’t think the black comedy translates well in a book, but would be more suited to a TV show. One saving grace of the story is that Claire’s character does evolve through her dating disasters and she comes to realize that she has plenty to offer Manhattan, but by the end, I still felt indifferent towards her.
I think the author tries too hard to find humour in a usually humourless situation and, as such, the characterization suffers in the process.
4/10
Carole Radziwill's Website