Bachelor Boys

Cassie Shaw is a perfectly respectable woman and she's seemingly ticked all the right boxes - nice flat, nice boyfriend, nice job. It's all just nice and that is precisely where her life is going wrong. There's no passion and she's with the wrong guy. But someone has got a plan for her...

During her childhood Cassie is practically raised by the loving, wonderful bohemian Phoebe, neighbour to Cassie's parents and a welcome relief to their cold austerity. Cassie would naturally do anything for her Phoebe and her charming, handsome, slightly crazy sons Fritz and Ben. Now Cassie, Fritz and Ben are adults, but cruelly Phoebe has fallen seriously ill and is concerned for her sons' increasingly scatty lives. So she asks Cassie a favour. She wants her sons to 'grow up' at last and for Cassie to find them wives who will care for them when she is gone.

Cassie agrees, though she's faced with a seemingly hopeless task in transforming these playboys. But one thing is clear, she can't possibly let Phoebe down. Phoebe, notably, is a wonderful character brimming with warmth and love and a stoic Englishness. This is her way to, at last, repay Phoebe for so many years of kindness. Along the route, Cassie must face her own demons and find out where her own future lies. But will Fritz and Ben play fair?

The novel tenderly entwines tragedy with laughter and abandonment with love. It has all the elements of chick lit - scatty, warm characters, mixed up relationships and caddish men - yet Saunders brings such depth of emotion, lump in the throat writing, spun up in what is ultimately a love story, that she makes this book really something quite brilliant. [Camilla Chafer]

If you liked this try In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner.

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