A Disappointing (Adult) Read...

The series appeals to children for many reasons (comfort, a feeling that one knows the "characters," following a character to, hopefully, a safe adulthood). I hadn't realized what this childish love meant to me as an adult reader until this week when reading Marian Keyes The Other Side of the Story.

In general, I can't stand "chick lit." But, I have a soft spot for Marian Keyes--I think she's funny and, usually, compassionate. And her books are like a series, in which some of her characters are from one family and they all resemble one another anyway. Her heroines are usually intelligent, well-meaning, ambitious. Usually they have a small addiction of one type or another. (Or a big one as in the case of Rachel in Rachel's Holiday, Keyes' best book in my opinion.) But, The Other Side of the Story lacks the sparkle of Keyes' other works and seems forced. I feel sad and empty, much as I did when I read Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter when I was 8 years old.