‘Fine, then. If it’ll shut you up, that’s what we’ll do. In five years, if we’re both still unattached, we’ll get married. To each other.’
‘Good.’ Cleo gave a nod of satisfaction; OK, now at least she had a safety net to fall back on. It might not be romantic but it was practical.
‘And if that’s not an incentive for me to hurry up and find myself a girlfriend,’ Ash said, ‘I don’t know what is.’
(from Take a Chance on Me, page 102 in the ARC)
Jill Mansell knows how to write a romantic comedy, and her books never fail to make me laugh out loud. Her latest novel, Take a Chance on Me, is no exception. Set in England in the small town of Channings Hill, Take a Chance on Me is the story of Cleo, a girl unlucky in love and forced to interact constantly with her childhood tormentor, Johnny LaVenture, now a famous sculptor. As a chauffeur, Cleo bumps into Johnny numerous times, and she begins to wonder whether he’s changed over the years.
Meanwhile, her best friend, Ash, falls in love. He’s a well known radio personality who oozes confidence on the air, but when the object of his affection is in close range, he can barely speak a coherent sentence. Cleo’s sister, Abbie, is having marital problems in which the past, namely her desperation to have children, comes back to haunt her — and in the midst of hysterics, she makes a big mistake. Then there’s Fia, who moves to Channings Hill to find herself after her marriage falls apart, and Georgia, a fiesty 18-year-old who barrels into town and upends some lives in the process.
Once again, Mansell has shown that secondary characters can be just as and even more captivating than the main characters. I don’t think Cleo is a strong enough character to hold up the book on her own, but she gets plenty of help from the quirky friends, old and new, in her life.
Take a Chance on Me is hilarious much of the time and serious some of the time, tackling such topics as bullying, adultery, and infertility, but Mansell never lets the story get too heavy. It’s predictable in a good way, and though I thought the ending was a bit rushed, I enjoyed it so much that it took me just two days to read more than 400 pages. Mansell has become my go-to author when I need a feel-good, humorous book with well-developed, entertaining characters.
Disclosure: I received a copy of Take a Chance on Me from Sourcebooks for review purposes. I am an Amazon associate.
© 2010 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.
Diary of an Eccentric 