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A review by kittyhorror
The Divorce Diet by Ellen Hawley
2.0
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Abigail's family disintegrates when her husband, Thad, decides that the marriage no longer works. She ends up taking her baby and staying with her parents until she sorts out what she's going to do. Having acknowledged that she's a bit overweight, she resolves to lose some weight using a new diet book that seems to come with an imaginary diet guru. As well as her weight loss she must contemplate getting back into the workforce and dealing with the fact that her husband has moved on with his new girlfriend.
I was really looking forward to a guilty pleasure, fluffy, chick lit read, unfortunately that's not what I got. My biggest problem with the book was the main character, Abigail. For about 95% of the read I found her irritating. She complains about her husband's lifestyle, that he likes the finer things in life, but was happy to go along with it when they were married.
The support she receives from other people after she separates from her husband, is never really appreciated. Del, the babysitter, is used as a sound board for Abigail to complain to and when she finds out that Del's partner is another woman, she brings up that it doesn't matter as long as she's good with the baby, as though being a lesbian is come sort of character flaw. She also thinks of telling her father about Del's sexuality, but only so that she can make him uncomfortable. Really!! Del seems to provide lots of non judgemental advice to Abigail, listening to endless discussion about Thad but hardly ever being asked how she her life is going.
Abigail's parents also seem to be willing to help as much as possible whilst asking for nothing in return but Abigail seems to be ungrateful for the type of support they provide and strops around her parent's house like a teenager.
It takes until around 75% in the book before Abigail starts to get herself together and by then it was difficult to really care how things were going to end for her.
I thought the book was going to be largely around her diet and this invisible guru, but it wasn't really used consistently and the invisible guru just seemed sort of tacked on and not a regular feature of the novel.
The humour in this didn't gel for me either, although I managed to get through the 60% fairly quickly I was glad when it was finished as it was dragging on and getting repetitive.
A quick but disappointing read.
Abigail's family disintegrates when her husband, Thad, decides that the marriage no longer works. She ends up taking her baby and staying with her parents until she sorts out what she's going to do. Having acknowledged that she's a bit overweight, she resolves to lose some weight using a new diet book that seems to come with an imaginary diet guru. As well as her weight loss she must contemplate getting back into the workforce and dealing with the fact that her husband has moved on with his new girlfriend.
I was really looking forward to a guilty pleasure, fluffy, chick lit read, unfortunately that's not what I got. My biggest problem with the book was the main character, Abigail. For about 95% of the read I found her irritating. She complains about her husband's lifestyle, that he likes the finer things in life, but was happy to go along with it when they were married.
The support she receives from other people after she separates from her husband, is never really appreciated. Del, the babysitter, is used as a sound board for Abigail to complain to and when she finds out that Del's partner is another woman, she brings up that it doesn't matter as long as she's good with the baby, as though being a lesbian is come sort of character flaw. She also thinks of telling her father about Del's sexuality, but only so that she can make him uncomfortable. Really!! Del seems to provide lots of non judgemental advice to Abigail, listening to endless discussion about Thad but hardly ever being asked how she her life is going.
Abigail's parents also seem to be willing to help as much as possible whilst asking for nothing in return but Abigail seems to be ungrateful for the type of support they provide and strops around her parent's house like a teenager.
It takes until around 75% in the book before Abigail starts to get herself together and by then it was difficult to really care how things were going to end for her.
I thought the book was going to be largely around her diet and this invisible guru, but it wasn't really used consistently and the invisible guru just seemed sort of tacked on and not a regular feature of the novel.
The humour in this didn't gel for me either, although I managed to get through the 60% fairly quickly I was glad when it was finished as it was dragging on and getting repetitive.
A quick but disappointing read.