Stella is a strong, independent, single Mom of stroppy
teenage daughter Lipsy who is constantly being extremely difficult, and she has
worked hard to provide a lovely home with the best of everything for her
daughter. She works for her best friend
Paul Smart at his estate agent business called Smart Homes and on who she used
to have a huge crush on but she says she is so over that now. When Stella’s house burns down, she moves in
with her mom who can’t stop spending money and when everyone says that it’s
nice that she’ll get everything shiny and new through her insurance, finally breaks the news that they had no insurance
cover. She has no alternative but to
rebuild their home completely from scratch.
Paul and Stella have a fabulous relationship, flirty but
safe in the knowledge that they both love the way it is now and love their
individual lives and neither need a romantic involvement to spoil the way they
are. When an ex of hers appears
unexpectedly, she questions her feelings for him and for Paul.
Stella starts to make a list of things that she can’t live
without. What and who is on the list?
This was an absolutely delightful read. I felt like I was in the plot myself and
could easily have been Stella. She was a
pleasure to know, a proper Mom wanting the best for her family. It was written well, flowed easily and made
you want to keep on turning the pages to find out what was going to happen
next.
I loved the dynamics in the relationship between Paul and
Stella, and Stella’s sense of humour was fantastic. I could really relate to her. She was a really genuine character with really
good morals and principles. She wasn’t afraid to work hard or get her hands
dirty and was determined that she would make a nice home once more for her
daughter even though her daughter was being incredibly badly behaved towards
her. All of the characters were
brilliantly created and you felt like you knew each and every one of them
inside out.
There were tons of hilarious laugh-out-loud moments in the
book, lots of occurrences of Stella finding herself in situations that weren’t
what they looked to be and this all added to the twists and turns and how the
story develops in the book. It ended perfectly, exactly how I wanted it to!
This was a really fun, feel-good and extremely entertaining
read and I’d love to learn more about these wonderful characters. Joanne has an incredibly wonderful easy to
read writing style. I absolutely did not want the book to
end. I’m sure that Joanne Phillips will be
giving some of the big names in the chick lit world a run for their money and I
would love to read more of her work. I
was quite surprised that this was her debut novel as she writes so
fabulously.
Joanne Phillips lives in Shropshire
with her husband and four-year-old daughter.
She has been published in
Writers’ Forum and Freelance Market News, has ghostwritten lots of non-fiction
books and has also had success with online articles and ghost-blogging. She won a Turner Maxwell prize in 2008, and
was recently longlisted for the Fish Flash Fiction Prize and shortlisted for
the Grace Dieu Writers’ Circle short story competition.
She is currently studying Creative Writing with the Open
University, and works and loves her job as an indexer. She has another two novels up her sleeve, I’m
delighted to find out that one is a follow-up to Can’t Live Without and the
other is a chick-lit/crime crossover novel.
2 comments:
Thanks for the review, and for not giving away the ending. I have this on my Kindle and must get a wiggle on in reading it ;)
Great review for a great book. Joanne can be proud of her first novel. I downloaded Kindle to my computer to read this book (not keen on reading this way and not my usual genre). It is well written and humourous with a deeper message within. Just how little could we actually live with if we had too! Well written with - as far as I could see - not one typo. Her blog is also an interesting and informative space. Follow her if you're not already doing so.
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