Book info

• Title The Best Things
• Author Mel Giedroyc
• Year 2021
• Genre Contemporary

A big-hearted story of a family on the brink and a mother scrambling to hold everyone up. Sally Parker is struggling to find the hero inside herself. All she wants to do is lie down. Her husband Frank has lost his business, their home and their savings, in one fell swoop. Their bank cards are being declined. The children are running wild. And now the bailiffs are at the door. What does an ordinary woman do when the bottom falls out? Sally Parker is about to surprise everybody. Most of all herself.

Thoughts

Hmm, this one is a real shame. I love Mel so much and the writing is so wonderful, it was very easy to read. I listened to the audiobook and read by the author with great style and excellent characterisations. It’s just that the characters are truly awful, all of them, with no redeeming qualities from start to finish. It’s a riches-to-rags story but it isn’t until right at the last minute that anyone even contemplates the idea of getting an actual job to help them out. I don’t know that these characters would be easy to swallow at any time, but in the current difficult financial situation for much of society… it really doesn’t go down well.

Rating: 2 / 5