Review – Sinéad MORIARTY – “Whose Life is it Anyway?”

Publ: 2008
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 1 844 88149 9
Genre: Romantic comedy
Pages: 358p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ***


What led you to pick up this book?
The blurb.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Girl and boy fall in love. (That’s chapter one.) Niamh O'Flaherty and Pierre Alcee then have to convince their families that their prospective partner is the right one for them. (That’s the rest.) It includes a lot of flashbacks into Niamh’s background as a Londoner born into an Irish Catholic family. Pierre’s background, dealt with comparatively sketchily, is definitely as un-Irish as it could possibly be.
Insofar as plot goes it is almost totally lacking and there were times when I anticipated a bit more of a twist to come – it never did.

What did you think of the characters?
Wonderful. Such extreme examples of their type and yet very believable.

What did you think about the style?
Again, wonderful. Hilariously funny. I don’t think a page goes by without its element of humour. At the beginning of each section is a brief ‘column’ written by the heroine for the Irish Daily News.

What did you like most about the book?
The hilariously amusing style.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
I felt the plot could have done with another twist or two to dramatise the relationship. This was definitely cosy romance with never any concern for the happy outcome.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Too femoinine. The book is good enough to appeal to both sexes and all ages. It is not just be the Mills and Boon romance that the cover seems to suggest.

Would I recommend it?
Yes.


SINEAD MORIARTY is a journalist in her early 30s who has worked in trade magazines in London. A native Dubliner, she has recently moved back to Ireland, where she is writing her second novel.