A review by loudgls89
Here Come the Girls by Milly Johnson

emotional funny lighthearted

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 I’ve been going through a process of uploading all my books into StoryGraph so I can use it to tell me what to read next, and I was shocked to realise that there were 3 Milly Johnson books on my shelf that I haven’t logged as read! I had to immediately rectify that, and this was the first one. 

As I was reading, it did feel quite familiar so I think I may have read this one when it came out 10 years ago before I was logging my books in Goodreads, but it was fabulous to re-read it again. 

The characters Ven, Roz, Olive and Frankie are written in such a way that you immediately feel like you could be best friends with them (which is typical for every Milly book I’ve read), and I absolutely love that. For me, it means I feel like I’ve been transported into the plot, like I’m there with them - and given that the location for this book is predominantly a cruise ship, that’s not a bad place to be transported. 

As is usual with a Milly novel, the characters are lovely well-rounded people, and their flaws are front and centre. But the friendships shine from the page - and I love how the friendships develop throughout this book - particularly between Roz and Frankie. 

All four characters are going through big things in their lives - Olive is stuck in a loveless marriage, acting as a carer for her hapless, lazy husband and his mother, working a cleaning job by day and looking after the whole household by night. She’s forgotten what it feels like to love. 

Roz comes across as a brashy confident person, but she’s been badly burned by her previous relationship and is risking losing the best man she’s ever known as she’s pushing him away. 

Roz also had a major falling out with Frankie which we don’t know all the details of, but Ven is determined that this holiday will get all four of them back on their feet again and back to the close-knit foursome that they were at school when they made all their dreams for the future together. And speaking of Ven - she’s hiding something. We’re not clued in on her secret so we don’t know what it is, which made for a glorious moment of discovery along with Ven’s friends. 

I loved how the characters progressed through the book, each taking a turn as front and centre so we can get to know them and become invested in their story - and I also loved the way that we kept getting glimpses into life back at home for them too - so we could see what they’d really been going through and how their families were doing without them. 

Full of drama, intrigue and of course romance, I absolutely loved this warm hug of a book.