A Walk in the Park

Single mum Lara returns to Bath for the first time since she was sixteen. Her father is dead but she really can’t bring herself to care. It’s not like he cared for her when he and her step-mum turfed her out the family home 18 years earlier. But when she meets up with her once best friend Evie, Lara decides to stay and that means bumping into her ex, Flynn and explaining her 18 year old daughter to him.

If you’ve read Jill Mansell’s books before, you’ll know what to expect. They are very similar in content and style but are fun easy reads. Instead of concentrating on just Lara’s story, the secondary characters get nearly the same page space. Lara is determined to match-make the newly single Evie with a variety of men but she gets the wrong end of the stick about the one she really likes (you know how it goes). Then there’s the odd side story of Harry the shirt-maker and an American rap star. By the end you realise Harry’s role in Lara’s life but it didn’t seem to fit with the rest of it.

The multiple plots means that everything’s over too quickly and it feels like things fall into to place far too easily in their lives. Which, when you think about it, isn’t really the case. I would have preferred a longer novel or just to concentrate on one character’s relationships.

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