The Woman Who Stole My Life Review

The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes




Synopsis

Stella Sweeney is back in Dublin. After living the dream in New York for a year - touring her self-help book, appearing on talk shows all over the USA and living it up in her 10-room duplex on the Upper West Side - she's back to normality with a bang. And she's got writer's block.

Stella wants a clean break as she didn't exactly leave New York on a high. Why is she back in Ireland so soon? Who is it who keeps calling? Stella wants to get back to being the woman she used to be. But can she? And should she?



Lisa's Review - 2 out of stars

I am a big fan of Marian Keyes so I was happy to receive a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly, I almost gave up with this book. Stella is back living in Ireland after unsuccessfully managing to make a massive hit with her debut book, One Blink at a Time, in America. The concept of her first book came about after Stella spent several months in hospital suffering a crippling disease which caused her entire body to shut down, leaving her only able to communicate through blinking.

There were so many stories jumbled into this one book that I struggled to keep up. The book flashed between Stellas current life, jumping back to her time in hospital, and her time in America. Plus throw in to that mix her crazy ex-husband who conducts some bizarre life experiment to try and prove that Karma exists, her son, who being truthful, is weird, her bossy sister, and her relationship with her neurologist, it was so hard to keep track of what was going on, where and when!

Just as I was about to give up and mark this as an unfinished book, it seemed to calm down, the storyline was less frantic, and easier to read. There was a big hunk in the middle that was actually pretty good and kept me entertained, but then as the end grew nearer it was like Keyes had run out of steam. The ending was probably one of the most predictable ones I have read for a very long time and was boring.

The highlights of this book were the parts from when Stella was in hospital, which is what kept me reading in the first place, and the parts where she was in America. I wish there had been a lot more focus on them and less of the hectic collection of everything else that was thrown in to the beginning and end.

Links

Goodreads                   Marian Keyes

Purchase Links

Amazon UK                Amazon.com                    KOBO