Living Dangerously

Oh, I so wanted to like this book. It’s Katie Fforde! She lives practically down the road from me (OK, about 20 miles away); she pops up on my local BBC radio station regularly, she’s lovely, how could I not like one of her books.

And yet.

This was Fforde’s first novel, published in 1995, and as her website states, it was her first attempt at a full-length novel after trying to write for Mills & Boon. Sadly, the M&B influence is a little too strong. Most of the book is actually quite decent, endearing, humorous, but the central characters, the two that you just know are going to end up happily ever after, have the most incredibly dysfunctional relationship. I think it may have been an attempt to inject a bit of a Lizzie Bennet/Mr show more Darcy element, but for me, it totally fails. In books with a romantic element, the reader generally wants to believe in the “happily ever after”; with this couple, I can’t see them lasting a year. And as for the sex scenes, I note that Fforde’s 2018 novel A Country Escape left much more to the imagination, which I hope means she realised she couldn’t write sex scenes very well. show less

1.5 stars

The 1996 publishing date was strongly felt here. It's wild how technological advances in just my lifetime make 1996 seems like another world. Writing phone numbers down on piece of paper and exchanging them, asking the bartender for the phone to ring up a cab, asking for an ash tray in a cafe, and not answering the phone because you think it's your mom but you don't know who it is. Really takes you back.

Also, mainly, this story made me want to buy an older generational woman a cup of tea or coffee and makes me sad again that I wasn't older/mature enough to give my grandma maybe a little more grace before she died. The way fear around men was prevalent in this and used in a way that the male main character was obviously show more showcased as a good man because all those times "he looked like he wanted to hit her" he didn't do it. The physical abuse threat hovering, lurking around in this was stomach churning, the MMC make-up is set to never to do but ugh, the threat in the wind with the female main character thinking it quite a lot. Not an older pub I'd suggest worthy of a revisit. show less

Zelfstandige pottenbakster (35 jaar) wordt verliefd op rijke, enigszins stijve oudere weduwnaar met 2 zoons.