Book Review / Cocktails for Three by Madeleine Wickham (aka Sopkie Kinsella)

 

Roxanne: glamorous, self-confident, with a secret lover -- a married man

Maggie: capable and high-achieving, until she finds the one thing she can't cope with -- motherhood

Candice: honest, decent, or so she believes -- until a ghost from her past turns up

At the first of every month, when the office has reached its pinnacle of hysteria, Maggie, Roxanne, and Candice meet at London's swankiest bar for an evening of cocktails and gossip. Here, they chat about what's new at The Londoner, the glossy fashion magazine where they all work, and everything else that's going on in their lives. Or almost everything. Beneath the girl talk and the laughter, each of the three has a secret. And when a chance encounter at the cocktail bar sets in motion an extraordinary chain of events, each one will find their biggest secret revealed.

Published:     19th August 2010
Publisher:  Black Swan
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Bought.

MY REVIEW

 

So I have finally made it to the last Madeleine Wickham book written.  For those of you who have been following this journey, you know that I am not having the best of time with these novels and I am really sad about that.  I am not sure if there are going to be any more novels written under this pen name, but this is the last one I am going to pick up.

I am happy to say that we are ending on a good note though.  I did enjoy this one.  The cast of characters wasn't too great and I was invested enough to really want to follow the story and see what happens.  You have the three main characters who each have their own secrets and we get to explore those and see those played out.  

I was hoping that this would be a good story that was also fun to read and it was that.  Yes, it was predictable but that was ok.

This is not a story that I would pick up again but did enjoy.

 

 

 

 

Book Review / The Tennis Party by Madeleine Wickham (aka Sophie Kinsella)

It was Patrick's idea that they should have the tennis party. After all, he has the perfect setting -- the White House, bought out of his bonuses as an investment banker. He hasn't actually told Caroline, his brash and beautiful wife, what the real reason for the party is. She is glad to welcome Stephen and Annie, their impoverished former neighbours, less glad to see newly wealthy Charles and his aristocratic wife Cressida, and barely able to tolerate the deadly competitive Don and Valerie.

But as the first ball is served over the net it signals the start of two days of tempers, shocks, revelations, the arrival of an uninvited guest, and the realization that the weekend is about anything but tennis.

 

Published:     9th June 2011
Publisher:  Black Swan
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Bought

 

 

MY REVIEW

 

OK, so I am on a roll with these novels now.  Since I am not really enjoying them as much as I thought I would I am just going to read them one after the other just to say that I have read them.  I wouldn't normally continue if not for the fact that I absolutely love Sophie Kinsella's main novels and as one of my favourite authors I like to say that I have read all her novels, including those I don't necessary get on with.

Honestly, I didn't have a lot of fun with this one.  There were far too many characters and of those many many characters that were in this novel I didn't really connect or care about any of them or their stories.  There was a certain point in the middle of this book where I just was bored and my interest never really came back again.   

I wish I had loved this more because I adore the author but this was just not for me. 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review / A Desirable Residence by Madeleine Wickham (aka Sophie Kinsella)

 

Liz and Jonathan Chambers were in trouble. Mortgage trouble. They'd stretched themselves to busting with their new exciting project - well, Liz thought it exciting - buying and managing the Silchester Tutorial College, and now couldn't sell their old house. Here they were, stuck with two mortgages, mounting debts and a miserable adolescent daughter who hadn't wanted to move anyway.

Then Marcus Witherstone came into their lives - and at first it seemed he would solve all their problems. Marcus, senior partner in Silchester's leading estate agency, was large, assured, and wore an expensive overcoat. He knew the perfect tenants from London who would rent their old house - glamorous PR girl Ginny and almost-famous Piers. Everything was going to be OK.

But soon Marcus found himself involved with Liz in a way he'd never intended. Keeping his adulterous trysts secret from Anthea was uncomfortably easy - most of the time her head was firmly buried in Improve your Child's IQ. Meanwhile, as Liz was lost in blissful dreams of Marcus, Jonathan was left to run the tutorial college. Neither of them had time to notice that teenage Alice was developing a desperate passion for the tenants, Piers and Ginny.

Everyone seemed to be entangled with everyone else, in the most awkward possible way. And as events closed in on him, Marcus began to realise that some deceptions are just a bit too close to home.

 

Published:     27th October 2011
Publisher:  Black Swan
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Bought

 

 

MY REVIEW

 

After reading Swimming Pool Sunday, I have to be honest and say that I didn't have high hopes for this novel.  I had to say that, but its true.  With Swimming Pool Sunday I had figured out that the usual sense of humour that I love with Sophie Kinsella novels would be missing from these novels written under the pen name.  Knowing and expecting that, I did enjoy this novel a bit more.

What I enjoyed the most about this novel was that it wasn't concentrating necessarily on a whole cast of characters but a few.  Mainly, we are following Liz and Jonathan as they navigate their financial troubles and try and find a way out of it.  Of course things do not go according to plan and of course there are a lot more problems that crop up along the way.

I still didn't connect with any of the characters enough to be fully invested in the story.

This was an OK read but not one that I would pick up again.  

 

 

 

Book Review / Swimming Pool Sunday by Madeleine Wickham (aka Sophie Kinsella)

 One shimmeringly hot Sunday in May, the Delaneys open their pool to the whole village for charity. Louise is there with her daughters, and while the children splash and shriek in the cool blue waters, she basks in the sunshine, attempting to ignore her estranged husband and dreaming of the new man in her life, a charismatic lawyer. The day seems perfect.

Then a sudden and shocking accident changes everyone's lives forever. Recriminations start to fly. Whose fault was it? Louise's new lover insists that she sues the Delaneys. Her ex-husband isn't so sure. Opinion in the village is split. Old friendships start to crumble. New ones are formed. Will the repercussions from the accident ever end?

Published:     3rd November 1997
Publisher:  Corgi
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Bought

 

MY REVIEW

 

Sophie Kinsella is a firm favourite for me, having loved most of her novels and enjoy both her style of writing and her sense of humour.  I had gone along for many years thinking that I had read most of her novels but then discovered in the past year or two that she had also written some novels, quite some time ago, under a pen name.  I knew that I had to give them a go.

I am not sure why she chose a pen name for this particular novel because it seems similar to her 'main' novels, the only difference I can see is that this has a cast of characters rather than a certain number of them and the sense of humor that I love in her main novels was missing from this. 

I really wanted to like this novel but, honestly, this was an OK story for me.  I enjoyed following the story and seeing what would happen after the accident but I didn't connect with any of the characters, so, honestly, wasn't really bothered one way or another what happened (except for the children, which I did feel sorry for...).   If this novel had a dose of the well known Kinsella sense of humour then maybe I would have enjoyed it more than I did.  

That said, this is not going to stop me from picking up the other novels written under this pen name because I am certainly intrigued to see what I think of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review / The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham

 

Everything's coming up roses for Fleur Daxeny, as she goes through more rich men than she does designer hats... if that's humanly possible. Beautiful, charming, and utterly irresistible, her success at crashing funerals to find wealthy men is remarkable. But behind Fleur's Harvey Nichols wardrobe, is a woman with a mysterious past. 

Fleur wastes no time in seducing her latest conquest, the handsome and rich widower Richard Favour, and she swoops into his life like a designer-clad tornado. His children are caught up in a whirlwind as their father's new girlfriend descends on the family estate leaving chaos and excitement in her perfume-scented wake. Soon, more than one family member is suspicious of Fleur's true intentions.
 
Fleur is not one to wear her heart on her Chanel sleeves, but she soon finds herself embracing Richard and his lovable family. But just as Fleur contemplates jumping off the gold-digger train for good and enjoying the ride of true love, a long-buried secret from her past threatens to destroy her new family. Fleur is thrown into a race against time to prove herself to Richard before it's too late.  Can she trust her heart or will she cut ties and run away as fast as her Prada pumps can take her?

 

Published:     5th September 2017
Publisher:  Piatkus Books
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Book 45, In Death
Source:  Bought
 

 

MY REVIEW 

 

Having recently read and enjoyed The Wedding Girl, I was looking forward to picking this up.  I was expecting a similar theme/plot where the main character either makes a mistake or has a bad character trait they can't get out of and the rest of the story is watching that play out, and I wasn't wrong.  That didn't mean that I didn't enjoy it.  This was just the type of story that I was looking for at the time and that is what I got. 

What I loved about this story was the main character Fleur.  You can obviously see that she has a problem and seemingly she is ok with it and carries on, irrespective of the people she hurts along the way and those people didn't seem to show that much distress from what I read in what she was doing.  

There were not many characters I liked in this story, for many various reasons, but there was one character that I really disliked and that was Richard's son when he featured more nearer the end of the novel.  He was very pushy and, to put it simply, very annoying.  Now this may have been for good reasons and maybe he was concerned for his father, but the way this character came across I felt was completely unacceptable.

That said, I would highly recommend this if you are looking for a no frills story that keeps you entertained all the way through.