Thursday 6 June 2013

Books Read: Trisha Ashley - Good Husband Material

James is everything Tish has ever wanted in a husband – she’s married a man who even her mother approves of. He’s handsome, dependable, and will make an excellent father – unlike Tish’s first love, the disreputable Fergal. Her teenage sweetheart abandoned her for a music career and now lives a typical celebrity lifestyle. Fergal broke her heart – James helped mend it.

Now, they’ve bought a cottage in the country. The next step – kids and a lifetime of domestic bliss. Well, that’s the plan. And even if James has a slight tendency to view the village pub as a second home, their relationship is still in pretty good shape after seven years of marriage. So why is marriage to Mr Right making her long for Mr Wrong?

The last few weeks for me have been a bit manic work-wise which has meant that I'm a little behind on writing reviews for all the books that I've read recently, so this week my aim is catch up and get them all written up.  So first up I'd like to apologise to Trisha Ashley and her publishers Avon for the delay in reviewing her latest book Good Husband Material.

The story begins with the hilarious first meeting of Tish and Fergal which involved her parrot... and pretty soon she has fallen head over heels in love with him, much to her mother's dismay, but they part when he's offered the opportunity to go to America with his band.  Although Fergal asks Tish to come with them she decides to stay behind.  We later discover that her mother had a hand in making sure that this romance never went the full distance.

Fast forward a number of years and Tish is now thirty and married to James and they're just about to move into the dream cottage in the country that she's always wanted.  As a romance writer Tish writes about happy ever afters but the move doesn't quite seem to be matching up to her hopes for her own happy ever after, James is never at home as he's either working late or in the village pub so the chance of them starting a family together doesn't seem to be on the cards.

When her teenage sweetheart Fergal makes a re-appearance old memories come flooding back making her think that perhaps he was the one that got away...  We're slowly introduced to him with headline snippets at the end of each chapter which seem to suggest that he's living up to his image as a typical rock star with women aplenty...

I have to confess that both Tish and James actually came across as a lot older than they actually were so it did take me a little while to warm to Tish, I never really did for James.  Fergal was definitely my favourite character, a lovable rogue with a heart of gold who genuinely cares for Tish. Although Tish, James and Fergal are the central characters in this book, there is an interesting mix of secondary characters especially Tish's mother Valerie.

At first I did wonder why everything was set in the 1990s and then I discovered that this is actually a re-publication of one of her books that had been previously published back in 2000, I hadn't read this before but if you're a fan of Trisha's then it's more than likely you will have already read this book.  

If you're looking for a nice light read this summer that you can't go far wrong with this book.  It's a nice light read with some hilarous moments weaved throughout and although the ending was a little predictable I didn't really mind that as it definitely felt like Tish had truly found her happy ever after...

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