Secret Diary of a Demented Housewife sits squarely in the Mummy Lit camp. It's chick lit after the heroine has left her job in PR, swopped her city flat for a house in the suburbs and had a couple of children with her dishy but distant hubby.
This is Niamh Greene's debut and I wanted to like it more than I did. Her writing is engaging, funny, and Bridget-Jones style chatty. Plus, the diary format worked very well for a light-hearted look at life as a stay-at-home-mammy.
However, while Greene's panache carried the book along, by about halfway through I had started to play spot the plot. Not an awful lot seemed to be happening and the things that did happen were a little, um, convenient and unbelievable.
Then we come to the cliches. The misunderstandings with the career-girl VBF (Very Best Friend) and her MOM (Man of the Moment), the interfering mother-in-law and cardboard-cut-out school-run mums.
Another problem with writing something so airy-fairy light in this genre is this: self-absorbtion (obsessing over tummy-size and designer bag-envy) is all well and good when you are a single girl about town, but it seems rather, well, whingey and selfish, when it comes from a woman with a kind, hard-working husband, two lovely children and a stable home.
Personally, in a book that focuses on family drama, I like a bit more heart and soul.
Rating: 3/5
Like this? Try: Rainy Days & Tuesdays by Claire Allan