After a couple chapters I started wishing that Marian Keyes or someone had written the darned thing - at least she'd have injected some life into an admittedly great plot idea. It was repetitive (check out the clumsy chapter in which Holly goes through her husband's stuff) and the humour was horribly flat. I didn't laugh (or indeed cry), though I may have smirked once or twice.

As for the characters, I rather liked Holly and her odd mix of strong and fragile. Her friends were stereotypes and the banter between them was painful at times. There seemed to be too many siblings - Jack in particular had no real purpose, his supposedly close friendship with Gerry introduced suddenly out of nowhere. Ah yes, Gerry. Holly's dead husband is extremely dull. How is buying a lamp supposed to be life-affirming?

All that said, there are some deft touches, especially towards the end of the novel; for example, the scene in the travel agent's and the part where Holly's boss tells her about visiting the botanical gardens in remembrance of his late wife.

I don't think it made any difference that Cecelia's father is the Taoiseach (that's TEA-shock for any non-Irish people; I suppose it's alright to call him PM, but I almost wept with happiness when an American referred to Bertie as his Irish title on TV recently). She admitted in an interview that it meant she "jumped the queue" at the publisher's, but it hardly accounts for the phenomenal sales worldwide. Bertie Ahern's not THAT much of a power-player; if Chelsea Clinton wrote a book, it'd be different.

Overall? Pretty disappointing.