I’m a big fan of Marian Keyes and was very excited when I found out this was coming out. And very happy to get my name on the holds list early! It was a real pleasure to read something of hers again that revisits the Walsh family. Since I wrote about her books for my St. Patrick’s Day post I’ve been itching to go back and read her earlier books and this definitely made me want to. There are 5 Walsh sisters and this is the final sister’s story-Helen.
Helen doesn’t really like people, she’s brusque, and she doesn’t fit in with folks. She’s a private investigator who’s fallen on hard times-business has dried up and she has lost her house, electricity, etc-and she’s forced to move back in with her parents. This is all especially difficult because, as she tells us in bits and pieces, she’s had a bout of depression that landed her in a hospital once before, and it seems like it might be happening to her again. Out of the blue an ex-boyfriend comes to her with a very important, top-secret, case: she must find a missing member of a once powerfully famous boy band before the reunion concert scheduled in less than a week’s time.
I really enjoyed this so much. Keyes is always funny and has a great way of blending funny, sassy, strange characters with genuinely heartfelt, realistic, touching emotions. It was a treat to see Mammy Walsh again and little peeks at the other sisters. And it was fun to have this one be a mystery and try to figure out where Wayne could have gotten to. The only thing that wasn’t super was the part about her no-longer-friend, Bronagh. She is alluded to occasionally, always in the past tense, so you know something big has happened to her. From previous books I assumed it was going to be a huge, very emotional revelation, and it ended up being very anticlimactic and not a big deal to me. But really, that was just a small part of it. I loved this and it was so much fun to have a Marian Keyes to read again.
This was our book club choice last month and I’m glad it was chosen because I remember wanting to read it when it came out. I really enjoyed this, despite a little hesitancy about reading about a young widow. Since getting engaged (almost six years ago, now married for 5) nothing has been scarier than the thought of my husband dying while we are still young. We all expect that at some point when we are old one of us will have to live without the other, but no one expects that after finally finding the right person and imagining growing old together your partner might die before you have even gotten out of your honeymoon phase, much less had children. That is the situation 36 year old Sophie (my age even!) finds herself in when her husband Ethan dies of cancer. 
