Going Dutch

When you get married you expect to share your life with the person you have fallen in love with. But for Jo and Dora, sharing seems to be rather challenging.

Jo's husband decided that he would share himself with another younger woman, and Jo leaves him to start her own life again and finds herself living on a barge in London owned by a friend.

Dora makes the momentous decision that who she has chosen to share her life with, is not going to make her happy and so she escapes and seeks refuge on the barge with Jo who also happens to be her best friends mum.

A new form of sharing begins as Jo and Dora try and find their feet in the new challenges that face them. Dora forms a friendship with Tom, who works at the local boat yard and he wants to show more share the more daring and unsafe side of life and challenges Dora to push herself out into the world.

Life on the barge seems idyllic, Jo is finding a new way to make a living when she finds out the barge needs to be re-insured, inspected and this cannot be done where they are - it needs to go to Holland. Jo needs to face up to actually travelling in this barge and sharing the adventure with the man who has been brought in to complete the task, Marcus. A friend from Jo's past.

Dora sees this as another opportunity to break away from her safe past, and with the help of boat mad Tom, Ed an expert first mate, Jo and the brooding Marcus with his high maintenance girlfriend embark on the trip. A trip that will change them all. When they come back from their adventures will they be sharing ever again?


The characters themselves were `nice', but sometimes, I kind of feel that `nice' just doesn't leave a good enough impression on me. Out of the two characters, Jo stood out more as she was the elder character being a woman nearing her fifties who was finding her feet again and she had some quirky aspects to her character. Dora, on the other hand, was just plain dull. For a start the name just conjures up an image if somebody older than she was meant to be (in her twenties) and she just didn't have that much personality.

The story itself also seemed to be a bit of a non starter. Don't get me wrong this certainly wasn't the worse book I have read it was just too safe with not an awful lot going on in it. There was no excitement and some scenes bordered on making me snooze!

As the story progressed, it was obvious what would happen and there was no doubt in either the author or the readers mind what the ending would be. All in all, for a first book by this author it didn't leave the greatest of impressions. It was very safe and a little on the dull side. show less

Well written and good fun http://www.dnsmedia.co.uk/reviews/view/516

I love all of Katie Fforde's books, Just noticed whilst searching for this one that she has a new one out Bidding for love, I have gotta look this one up at work tomorrow.

9780099517870

Amazon UK