Lucy ni siquiera tiene novio; a decir verdad, es poco afortunada en amores. Sin embargo, la señora Nolan, experta echadora de cartas, le ha pronosticado un inminente matrimonio. Sus entrañables compañeras de fatigas reciben la noticia con consternación: la anunciada boda de Lucy puede poner fin a las alegren andanzas del grupo, a sus borracheras, sus comilonas, su incansable e infructuosa búsqueda de hombres. Lucy se apresura a tranquilizarlas: aparte del ligero inconveniente de que no hay ningún príncipe azul en su vida, tiene ya suficientes problemas familiares y personales como para pensar demasiado en el tema. ¿Se cumplirá el vaticinio de la adivina?

DNF at page 190 because this was supposed to be lighthearted and fun but if it's taken me six days to get this far in, well, there are other books I'm clamouring to read. Fairly generic chick lit.

Let me guess. She marries Daniel, right? Great, thanks for saving me 421 pages. (No actually, someone please let me know if she does...) ( )

Somewhat predictable story about a group of 20 something women in London; their love lives, aspirations and problems. Not Keyes best. ( )

There is so much drinking in this book. It goes from being a mystifying textural detail (how do these people hold down jobs?) to a plot point--but still labeled other characters' problem even as the plates are smashed, lovers lost, and bank accounts overdrawn. I was intrigued by a heroine with clinical depression, but that never quite gets tied in with the alcohol, and the scenes before she reaches self-awareness (such as it is) were tough to get through. For too large a portion of the book, the reader is the only sober person at this party.

So this ended up being one of the very first books that I bought on my Amazon Kindle when I was overseas. I don't know why but I manage to always read this book when I am feeling blue. Maybe it's because right now I am being hit over the head with the fact that my happily ever after may look totally different than my friends/family and I need to be okay with that. I loved books in this genre since just like with romance novels, you know that the girl is always going to get the guy in the end and that the villains for the most part will get their comeuppance.

Told in the first person, the main character is Lucy Sullivan. Lucy is in her twenties and lives with two roommates, Karen and Charlotte. We find out that Lucy has a contentious relationship with her mother, a loving one with her father, and an indifferent one with her two brothers. Things in Lucy's life seem to be going okay. She has a job she hates and works with people that seem annoying/tolerable depending on the day of the week. After being bullied into going with her colleagues to a psychic, Lucy is told that within a year she is going to meet the man she is going to marry. Readers get to hang on for a fun ride looking at Lucy's life and those around her for that full year.

I thought that the character of Lucy was aggravating at times. She suffers from depression, but one gets the sense that she really doesn't suffer from depression, she instead uses it to just not do things that she wants to. She is also very rude to a long time family friend, Daniel to the point I wondered about his intelligence since he kept on hanging out with her.

Eventually Lucy meets Gus who she finds herself falling madly in love with. At the same time it appears that several other people in Lucy's life are moving on with their own love lives.

The writing reads like a twenty plus year old with no clue about things. I think that Lucy's selfishness sometimes may get to certain readers. I just found myself cheering her on and unable to stop myself. I think the reason why is that halfway through the book changes gears from being a breezy romantic comedy, to an actual dramedy (comedy and drama combined) and you quickly realize that without realizing it, Lucy was a bit of an unreliable narrator.

The pacing is really good with this book and I was surprised at how fast I was getting through the chapters.

The ending was very sweet and I smiled to myself. I always wished that Marian Keyes would revisit the characters in this book and do a sequel with Lucy actually married to the guy she was destined to marry.

Marian Keyes has come out recently asking for people to not call her novels chick-lit. I guess I never saw that label as a bad thing, though I can see how some people would use that term to dismiss entire genres of books. I love this books and many of her other ones just because along with the romance aspect there is always still an underlining layer of depth and drama. ( )