I definitely liked "Rachel's Holiday" a lot more than "Watermelon." Maybe because this one more expressly shows the flaws in the Walsh family matriarch and father. Also, I still disliked Helen in this one too. Anna seems mostly harmless and cares. We also get to see/hear more about Maggie(one of the 5 sisters). I felt sorry for Rachel who is in the midst of addiction and doesn't even want to admit what has been going on with her. And unlike with Claire in the last book, Rachel even though she goes through a series of missteps, realizes that no man is going to be able to save her, she's going to have to save herself. 

"Rachel's Holiday" is Walsh Family #2. Rachel Walsh has been living in New York with her best friend. Though Rachel has a pretty terrible job (she works at a rundown hotel as a maid) she has a great guy in her life named Luke (though she doesn't want to call him her boyfriend). When Rachel has a hard time waking up one day, she finds herself at the hospital getting her stomach pumped. Her parents send her sister and husband to get her and bring her back to Ireland. Rachel only agrees to go back since her father wants to send her to a rehab center in Ireland called the Cloisters where the rich and famous go. Rachel of course blithely thinks nothing is wrong. When Luke cruelly dumps her, Rachel is determined she will find someone else, though she still has thoughts of Luke. Once Rachel is at the Cloisters she finally comes face to face with her past and what her present course was taking her.

So I watched "Rocketman" this weekend and that movie dealt very well with addiction. I thought that "Rachel's Holiday" did as well. I think Keyes telling the story via first person was smart. Because you get to see Rachel's side to everything. And until Rachel is brutally confronted with her past and why she's at the Cloisters part of you may wonder is she really an addict, or had some bad times. 

I thought that the why behind Rachel's addiction was so good though too. Rachel wanting someone or anything to blame wasn't the point. The point was what was she going to do now.

Keyes develops so many of the secondary characters that Rachel meets very well too like Jackie, Luke, and others. We also have pop-ins by the Walsh family who I swear would have me changing my name and going into witness protection. 

The writing was top-notch. I am guessing that Keyes did extensive research on rehabs and addiction because everything read as spot on to me. I have one brother who has finally sought alcohol treatment and several members of my family I had to unfortunately cut off once I realized their addiction wasn't going to change if I didn't stop enabling them. This book definitely had me wincing a bit along with laughing and even feeling tears. Definitely not a typical chick-lit book considering the subject matter. However, the romance that started with Luke and his real he-man group was hilarious and I thought the sex scenes were great. 

The flow was the one issue that caused me to give it four stars though. The book dragged in a few places here and there. Mostly towards the middle and end I thought. 

The book setting moves between New York, the Cloisters, and then Rachel at home with her family. I thought the New York and Cloister scenes were done so well. I felt for a Rachel that so wanted to impress all these women and rich people surrounding her because she just didn't feel good enough.

The ending was great. I loved that we see Rachel in a new stage of her life and she's focused on being a better person. 

So I have all of the Walsh Family books in paperback. I haven't read them in years, but decided to take the first two for a whirl this weekend. And now I wonder if I read this years ago and liked Claire or what? Cause Claire drives me a bit insane in this book. And when you read about how she changes over the course of the series, she ends up being the Walsh sister I dislike the most (tied with Helen and her book, "The Mystery of Mercy Close"). So good things I can say, the re-read went by fast and I loved the change in Claire, but it didn't really stick though. The not so good things, I see more flaws in this one upon re-read. The Walsh family is kind of nasty and not supportive. I thought that Claire too easily caved and was sitting around waiting for a man to save her. Also the whole why behind James's affair read as unbelievable to the extreme. I also thought that her romance came out of nowhere and ultimately didn't work. 

"Watermelon" is the first book in the Walsh Family series by Marian Keyes. The first book deals with the oldest of the Walsh sisters, Claire. Claire is happily married to her husband James and living in London. She's expecting their first child any day now. When Claire goes into labor and gives birth to their daughter, James informs her that he's been having an affair and is leaving her for the other woman. 

So there is Claire days post-partum with no husband which causes her to return home with her daughter to her family in Dublin, Ireland. 

Most of the book deals with Claire depressed and upset (rightfully so) with wondering where did things go wrong with her husband. Keyes does a lot of switching between past events and the present day. I have to say that Claire was pretty much a mess. Her mother deals with the baby for the most part and the baby isn't even a thought I felt after a while. When Claire starts to feel tingles towards a man she meets I just hard sighed. And of course Claire's husband returns and I maybe sighed some more. So we get a love triangle which is one of the romance tropes I hate the most. 

The other characters in this book are not developed very well. Claire's mother kind of sucks and isn't that supportive of her daughter actually kicking her lousy husband to the curb. Her two younger sisters, Anna and Helen sound exhausting. I would have ended up slapping Helen and trying to smother her. She's nasty and everyone seems to excuse it cause's she's small and gorgeous. 

James was developed very well, but the real why behind the affair read as false to me. I scratched my head a few times because I couldn't remember that at all. James seemed to undergo a personality transplant that didn't work. Romance trope that I hate, make the guy who actually sounds awesome suddenly turn into a monster for plot reasons so heroine can be with the other guy. 

The writing was okay, I was mostly bored though with the book after a while. I realized it was because that unlike with most of my favorite re-reads, I wasn't enjoying this one that much and since I knew the ending I was wondering why it was taking Keyes so long to get there. This is a pretty big paperback that I have (it's over 400 pages) and I am wondering about donating it since there are other series that I like a lot more and I don't want to wait another 10 years before picking this up again. 

The ending was flat. I honestly wish that there had been additional conversations between Claire and James. Honestly I wish that Keyes had decided to focus in on them and not even bring in that other love interest. It was just a mess and the backstory of that guy had me sighing hard too. 

Opening Line:” ”I’m sorry, you must think I’m very rude. We’ve hardly even been introduced and here I am telling you all about the terrible things that have happened to me.”

Claire thought she had the perfect life right up until her husband James announced that he didn’t love her anymore and was leaving her for another woman. He might have picked a better day to deliver this earth shattering news than directly after the birth of their first child. Shocked, heartbroken and now packing some serious baby weight, Claire flees London and retreats back to her dysfunctional family in Ireland to regroup. Claire’s idea of regrouping is of course to take to bed and only emerge when the baby needs feeding or she runs out of liquor.

Eventually she does get out of bed, hitting her father’s dusty stationary bike to work off the rage and inadvertently the pounds. Yes her period of mourning has gone from devastation to depression to rage. And then she goes about starting her life again. Along the way one of her sisters drags home Adam, the cute, younger and (obviously unobtainable) man that honestly seems to be flirting with her. Before long Claire has almost forgotten James, well not really but he’s no longer her first waking thought and besides Adam has a really nice bum. So then the story gets kinda predictable because of course James comes slinking back. He has some interesting excuses for having his affair but now basically just wants everything to go back to the way it was!

Okay I have to talk about James, what an asshat. I understand he is meant to the antagonist here but jeez. It’s not so much his character I am judging but that of the author deciding our heroine would actually be dumb enough to consider taking him back after the shit he pulled. I mean he hasn’t phoned once or even asked after his daughter, in fact doesn’t even know her name and to top it all off he blames Claire for the fact that he had an affair. And then Keyes continued to write him in such a way that he actually comes across a bit psycho, with moods changing on a dime (yes she loves to use idioms) and yet Claire still wants him in her daughter’s life. I would be doing everything I could to make sure he never had contact with her. Anyways.

This was a super long book (614 pages) which wouldn’t have been an issue if the author had stayed on track. As it was this could have been cut by about 200 pages as the heroine’s silly (see annoying) inner dialogue prattled on with random off topic issues, spending 8 pages talking about the history off her parents’ liquor cabinet and other non-related issues. Some of her inner ramblings were funny but I’ll be honest it got to the point where I was skimming just to get on with the actual story (this continued for the entire 600 page read.)

I did enjoy the sections where it was written as though the author/heroine is talking directly to the reader. However I still never got a real “feel" for her. I also had a hard time believing that she was a new mother, her baby is such a non-issue throughout this book, just part of the plot and then she remains in the background as an accessory while Claire goes about her binge drinking and depression at her parents’ house. And with that in mind I would have to describe this as bitter chick-lit because while it has its moments of humour its always with a harsh edge so that you’re not so much laughing as cringing. 380jb3.5