It’s an ill wind, as they say, that blows no good, but this time an ice storm does even more: mending a broken marriage, healing neighbourly rifts and generally acting as a ploy by Cupid – even for fish! This whimsical tale is a cheerful tonic for those cold wintry days, when Spring still seems a long way off.
Nina and her cat Phil made me contemplate my life as a thirty-something living in a city a little less hipster than LA. She is, as was I, fond of her easy life as a bookish person, with her friends and her pub-quiz team. Until a long lost dead father turns her life around, gives her siblings and a boyfriend she doesn't want. What more can I want as a reader, lusting for something funny, light and airy as a chocolate cupcake with a bit of chili?
View The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
This is a very funny book about family and ethics. Amid the global financial crisis, Doro sets out to tell her grown up children some good news. But each is preoccupied with a crisis of their own: Serge, putting their commune childhood behind him, is making good money in banking but can't face telling Doro. Oolie-Anna wants to leave home. And Clara, teaching in a difficult school, has to confront past demons in the form of a class hamster.
View Various Pets Alive and Dead
Sally tells the story of her mid-life antics involving her 'creative' son, her overwhelmed new-mum daughter, her politician spouse, a rat-catching lodger, two long-standing friends, and a neighbour with an unhealthy interest in rhubarb leaves. Sally's life is all wrapped up in a comical coat of witty observation and good old-fashioned British humour guaranteed to raise a smile (and an eyebrow).
View Domestic Bliss and Other Disasters
What a delightful, funny, touching book. I loved Mr and Mrs Ali - their bickering, their wisdom, their compassion. This was a magical depiction of that classic battleground - family, property, class - and marriage.
View The Marriage Bureau for Rich People
Our 40-something scatterbrained but big-hearted heroine, deciding her life is in a rut and that she needs to raise her game as a wife and mother, embarks on a madcap programme of self–improvement which badly backfires in the space of one day. The free-association narrative is waylaid by satirical riffs of cultural commentary and family background which play out like storyboard scenarios for a TV comedy series - and is enormous fun to read.
View Today Will Be Different
What if you had known as an 18 year old what you now know as a middle-aged adult? This emotionally charged romantic comedy is a mad-cap romp across time and different fictional genres. It is a great antidote to the stress of these current fraught times, inducing in me an unexpected nostalgia for the Nineties!
Our hapless protagonist, going through a mid-life crisis in his love life and work, rents out his house on Airbnb - cue for an engaging series of guests and their emotional problems. The humour is subtle, underscored with character-revealing dialogue and sardonic inner musings. And although there’s a poignant underlying theme of loss and loneliness, it is entertaining, raunchy, and enormous fun - with the added bonus of lessons in creating art.
View Super Host
Gather a crowd of family and old friends together in the days leading up to a wedding and you get this - a story of misunderstandings, mistakes, regrets, not quite forgotten rivalry and awkward situations. Infused with humour and a cast of flawed characters it makes for an engaging wry comedy about people and lifestyle.
View Seating Arrangements
Wow! What a great, fun, holiday read. Fast paced and true to life, with believable characters you may even start giving advice to. Maggie's marriage is in ruins, and she decides to spend a month with her best friend, an impoverished script writer,in Los Angeles. She meets strange LA actors and models and has sexual dalliances, but will she eventually find herself and 'live happily ever after'?
View AngelsYou won’t find the biggest bestsellers on Whichbook as everyone knows about them already. But you can use your enjoyment of a current bestseller to see titles with a similar mood that you might try next.
