Review - The Family Trap by Joanne Phillips

Another cracker from author Joanne Phillips in this brilliant follow up to Can't Live Without.

Can't Live Without (my review can be found here) saw Stella find her perfect match in best friend Paul and tells all about how they got to this book, which is where Stella's daughter Lipsy is about to give birth and just before her wedding day, Stella finds herself most unexpectedly in the family way too!

There is however, one big problem and that is that Paul doesn't want kids.  He abandoned the mother of his now 8 year old daughter when he knew she was pregnant and has only just started to get to know her.  Knowing how anti-babies he is, can Stella still marry the man that she loves with all her heart if they want different things and she is one very determined lady who is going to have this baby no matter what gets in her way!

I loved this book easily as much as I loved the first, possibly even more.  I could have jumped right on into the pages of this book and joined the cast! A fabulous family, sparring with each other for a lot of the time but with a love that is so deep it has no bounds.  

I'm loving Jo's style of writing which is just so easy to follow and keep on turning those pages that you just get entangled in their lives.  The story unravels so naturally and flows so gracefully and I absolutely adored hearing about Stella's relationship with her first grandson and also her teenage daughter and her own mother, all of those relationships testing in different ways. 

Thanks so much Jo, for bringing these lovely characters into my life and sharing them with me.  It's been an absolute pleasure. I look forward to hearing more about them and if you're not planning to write another book about these people that I love so much, you'd better break the news gently to me because I think I'll be quite devastated!

Joanne Phillips lives in Shropshire with her husband and five-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 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.  I'm delighted to tell you that she has another novel up her sleeve - a chick-lit/crime crossover novel.  Can't wait to read that! 

Jo is also the daughter of Anne Renshaw who has been inspired by her very clever daughter and last year brought out her book A Grave Inheritance which I was so lucky to get hold of and it was just amazingly brilliant.  What a talented family!  More info about Anne's book can be found by clicking here.  

Find out more about Jo at her at her website

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