Let's be honest.....you can NEVER go wrong with a Jill Mansell book!! NEVER!!!!!!

The perfect romance book, where everybody's who is nice gets his/her happy ending. The plot has also a couple of twists and the interactions between characters are sometimes hilarious. Summer book for a good couple of days.

Il perfetto romanzo d'amore, dove tutti quelli che se lo meritano ottengono il loro lieto fine. La trama ha anche un paio di situazione che evitano la banalitá e l'essere completamente scontato, che é un rischio che questo tipo di libri puó spesso correre, inoltre i personaggi sono divertenti. Libro estivo per passare un paio di giorni divertenti.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND SOURCEBOOKS LANDMARK FOR THE PREVIEW!

I really enjoyed this book. It was funny and charming. It would make a terrific rom-com movie. I received this as an ARC from Edelweiss.

This one just felt a bit off to me. Probably because I realized going in after being introduced to everyone, I knew who was going to pair off together. So I felt annoyed waiting through the whole book for the characters to figure it out themselves. It didn't help though that we get a random wrench thrown in this one (a character who makes a terrible mistake that impacts another) that didn't seem atypical for this character at all. The book was too fast in wrapping things up I thought.

"You and Me, Always" deals with characters living and visiting Stanton Langley. Lily has been raised by a friend of her mother's Coral and her husband since her mother died when she was 8. Lily's two best friends, Patsy and Dan (brother and sister) have all known each other since they were babies. When Lily receives the last letter from her mother on her 25th birthday, it seems to be the kick she needed to get in contact with a man that her mother tells her was the love of her life (Declan). Lily also meets movie star Eddie (hiding out in Stanton Langley) and wonders if this is the man to get her over her decades long crush of Dan.

Usually I think Mansell can juggle multiple characters well, but not in this one. I think it's because the stories were sometimes opposed to each other and it felt like we should just be reading stand-alones. We have Coral dealing with being a widow and starting to have feelings for Declan. I found it interesting, but it didn't gel well when we would bounce back to Lily and Patsy. The three women are not really in the same age group so it didn't feel right they were on top of each other so much and didn't seem to have other friends besides each other.

Patsy's marriage and bad dating woes were pretty hilarious, but I think Mansell jumped at her getting a HEA and didn't put in enough work for us to be rooting for her or her love interest.

I didn't really care about Lily and Eddie, they never did work for me.

The writing was typical Mansell, the flow could have been improved though.

The setting of this village felt even tinier than I can imagine. Usually Mansell can have me imagine a place and I feel there, this just felt blah to me.

A cheap quick read (was 99p on kindle). Very predictable but wouldn't expect anything less.

I have really enjoyed some of Jill Mansell's novels; they aren't shocking or racy or twisting but they are safe and obvious and light-hearted. You can fall into one of her books for a few hours and arise with a smile on your face feeling warm and content. 'You and Me, Always' will never be classed as one of my favourite books, but it was enjoyable for a few hours as an evening read, I didn't have to think too hard. However, there were a few aspects that hampered that enjoyment, and I ended up rolling my eyes a few times.

I loved the premise - Lily's mother had died when Lily was a child, but had left her letters and gifts to be opened on every birthday until her 25th. I thought that the main plot would be Lily discovering the people and stories of her mother's past through the letters, with a side dish of romance. This was not the case and actually this whole aspect was only used as a device to introduce a few new characters and a dash of 'tension' toward the end, otherwise it was kind of forgotten. This was quite disappointing, because I'd much rather have read about Jo's past and her life before her death, than read long chapters about Patsy's numerous and disastrous dates.

Naturally the lead couples, Lily and Dan and Coral and Declan were destined to be together, but with a few bumps along the way. These stories became the main plots and dominated that of Jo and her letters. I really disliked the fact that we were introduced to quite a few supporting characters - Trent, Gail and Derek - who were downright vicious and nasty. It was as though Mansell wanted to include them in the plot to keep us on our toes, but wanted to make sure that we hated the characters and knew that they weren't 'long-term'. Was it really necessary for both Derek and Trent to attack Patsy and Coral verbally throughout the novel? Derek being so smug and disgusting in the pub toward the end of the novel, really, really got my back up, and I couldn't see any real point in the attack besides reinforcing how nice her actual boyfriend ended up being? It also made me dislike both Patsy and Coral, who were attacked verbally but didn't say a word to the contrary and just took the abuse.

Lily and Dan were in love with each other, but kept silent to avoid ruining a 20+ year long friendship. They were fantastic together and I enjoyed reading about their burgeoning romance, cheering them on all the way. Why then did Coral and Declan have to be the same? Both in love but not willing to break the silence? Couldn't it have been different from the main plot so that we had another layer of interest? Maybe they admitted their attraction but Coral was too worried about Nick to fully commit? Again, it felt as though the romance was there just to fill the pages rather than being a developed story of its own.

Overall I thought the book was light and obvious, but enjoyable if you want a novel that is just easy to fall into without much thought required.

Echt een vakantie boek, zo uit en een schattig verhaal met veel klein verhalen erin, een echt feelgood!

Thanks Babette voor het lenen :)

Lovely, sweet, cozy story.