Some girls have the kind of relationship with their mothers that it often feels like they're best friends. Other girls have mothers who try really hard to be their best friends and actually end up driving their daughters mad. Alice Harrison is one of those girls. Her mother, Suzie, is approaching sixty but is acting like her coming birthday is her sixteenth instead. When she comes up with a hare-brained scheme to find love for herself and her daughter Alice begins to despair - why can't she have a mother like other girls?
Alice is a life coach, though the fact that her husband left her for another man and then became her best friend makes her wonder at times how it is that she can sort everyone else's lives out just not her own. Suzie has a highly popular newspaper column that she appears to feel is the perfect venue to discuss her own life, and more worryingly Alice's. She has bemoaned the fact that Alice looks likely to remain single in this column, but even this hasn't helped her to find love. With her sixtieth birthday looming Suzie decides on a scheme to sort out Alice's life - she doesn't want any presents from Alice, all she wants is for her to have a date for the birthday party.
When Suzie announces the scheme Alice is, as you might expect, a little reluctant. Particularly when Suzie decides that she thinks she ought to join in the plan - after all she can't turn up to her own birthday party without a date! Grudgingly Alice agrees, though to be honest with her mother you can't help but give in.
Everything seems to be going smoothly when both Alice and Suzie find themselves a man early on into the scheme. Suzie meets her man on the Eurostar; he's fifteen years her junior, but who's counting? Alice meets her man at work; she's vowed never to date a client, but he's just so persuasive. When the two women discover that their new men are the same person... well you can imagine the fun!
This is a well written book with believable characters. At times I found Suzie to be completely infuriating, but I know people with mothers just like her. Alice is the more likeable character, though at times she verges on becoming a little wet. The plot itself is a little thin, though some of the dating events are quite amusing.
This is a decent book, but it's not great. I found myself wanting to get to the end of it so I could start another book, but I never once thought about not finishing it. Worth a look, though you might be better of getting it from your library.
Rating : 3 out of 5
Like this? Try 'I'm Celibate - Get Me Out Of Here' by Jo Elliot
