Grown Ups

This was a really good read! I loved the mix of crazy family drama and the humour.

Despite never having been to Ireland, I loved the Irish setting! The descriptions of Tuscany were great too (another place I haven't been to!).

With so many characters it did take a few chapters to get a grip of which branch of the Casey family each character belonged to. My favourites were Ed (he really was the nicest brother) and Bridey (she was just hilarious). My least favourite was Liam..I though Johnny was ok too, but honestly Liam was just creepy and awful! I honestly don't know what made Nell marry him!

I loved that the book touched on a whole variety of issues from love, grief, loss, addiction, jealousy, self esteem and even the plight of refugees.

As usual with Marian's books, this was another well written book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada and Doubleday Canada for the chance to read an eARC of this book.

1/5 • First DNF of 2023

This book has been sitting on my TBR for a couple of years and I finally picked it up at the start of the year. While this book touched on some important adult topics such as; managing finances, body image issues, eating disorders and blended families etc. I felt there was way too many characters introduced too quickly with virtually no description given till later in the story and for some characters no description at all. As the story centres around three seperate couples within a family I think the book would have been better structured in three parts, one for each couple rather than blending them into a mismatch of chapters. I found nearly all the characters and the relationships un-relatable and this book put me in a bit of a reading slump as I didn't want to pick it up so unfortunately I had to dnf to move onto a book I would enjoy.

Way too long for the payoff, and it was hard to connect with any of the characters. Very readable, like all books by this author, but I would think twice about investing so much time in her work again.