I have been really excited about reading this book for a long time and after hearing so many positive reviews about it, I was so eager to start!
Now, I am always honest when I review books and I have to say I was left feeling a little disappointed after reading this book.
Bonnie is a thirty-something single mother with a fifteen year old daughter and has a rather unprecedented ‘mum’ crush on Holden Finn - singing sensation and twelve years her junior. When Bonnie finally gets the chance to meet Holden Finn, she can’t quite believe her luck but she quickly lands back in reality and has to face up to the demands of her fussy boss, her mum who is intent on moving abroad and her teenage daughter.
I thought the premise sounded really brilliant and quite original too: I haven’t read a book about a normal person/celebrity romance for a while and especially not one where there is such a striking age gap. However I felt that this aspect of the novel was more a sub-plot than the main plot. I would have thought an eponymous character would have a greater presence in the book but it seemed the plot focused more on Bonnie’s dysfunctional family life and her budding romance with delivery driver Max. The whole plot felt a little unrealistic: I can’t imagine a mega superstar having such a strong attraction to a single mother who is much older than him.
The characters were a confusing bunch. I found it hard to relate to Bonnie and she flittered between being headstrong and being walked all over constantly and it was hard to work out what she really was like as a character. Her daughter, Paige, was an awfully rude and disrespectful character: the things she got away with saying and doing to her mother and grandmother were atrocious in some cases! I would never ever talk to my family in that way. Linda, Bonnie’s friend and colleague, was again a little of an enigma, at times I liked her but other times I felt a little uneasy about her. Max was the saving grace of this book: he restored in my faith in nice characters! He was very considerate and put up with a lot from Bonnie and I really enjoyed reading about him.
Tilly’s writing is consistent throughout and she writes well for the genre. There were a few tiny places where I had to stop and re-read parts as they didn’t make sense. A sentence about Bonnie having an eighty year age gap with her mother was very strange and I had to read it about twenty times to make sure I was reading it right! There was also a strange flow to the book –there were a lot of asterisks breaking up the text and I have to say that there were many points that they weren’t needed: it was clear enough from what was being said that we were in a new environment or time had skipped ahead. It interrupted the flow a little.
However, I cannot say that this book is not worth reading. If this book had a slightly different blurb then it would perhaps have made me love it more. I think I was mainly disappointed because the promise of a great, laugh out loud, celebrity crush story wasn’t fulfilled. It was instead an in depth look at one woman’s love life where she was in a, well, a ‘love square’ and happened to bump into a famous celebrity who developed a strange and unrealistic crush on her.
Furthermore, I am just one reader and, from looking at other reviews about this book it appears the majority have LOVED it so I think there was a lot of reader fault in not enjoying this book. Give it a go! You never know, you might fall in love with it.
An interesting and comprehensive look at one woman’s love life and the tough decisions she has to make and the things she has to sacrifice to live the life she wants.