*Spoiler alert* – I will basically tell all the story because there ain’t much to it.
Steffi - vegan chef who works at a café in New York. Who is a free spirit who always shies from responsibility and moves from one job and relationship to another. She is asked by one of the regulars at the café to dog/horse sit for a year and in exchange he will give her a house to live in on the out skirts of New York to live for free. And she jumps at the chance.
Callie – is Steffi's older sister who is an amazing photographer and has a perfect husband and two kids, although she would like it if her husband was home more often, but he has to work away a lot.
Honor – Mother of Steffi and Callie. She divorced her husband when Steffi was very young because she felt trapped because she is a free spirit too. She remarried again to her soul mate, but he recently died and now she dedicates her life to her children.
Walter – Father to Callie and Steffi. He was very angry with his wife when she left, so much so that they have barely spoken for 30 years.
Lila – She became Callie's best friend at camp and she has been one of the family since. She has recently finally found the love of her life - Ed, an English divorced father, although he does come with the baggage of a crazy ex-wife.
Reece – Callie's perfect husband, who is starting to think that he may be too old to keep up with all the travelling he is doing with work any maybe slow down.
Mason – Steffi's regular at the restaurant who is in a dead relationship with his wife, but stays because of the kids. He has to stay in London for a year to set up the new English branch of his publishing house.
Callie develops terminal cancer and the book then focuses on how they all cope around her and deal with her illness.
This was clearly a personal book to Jane Green but I'm afraid it is one of those clichés that you cant see what is wrong with something when its up close and personal and I'm afraid its quite boring.
The first thing is that there are too many characters the book focuses around and because of that, the story line falls short and the main pivotal point - the cancer- doesn’t appear to well over half way through. I cant help but basically tell all of the story because there isn’t much else to it. The characters are all a bit 2D and I didn’t like the way the characters interacted with each other. We kept being told how they felt and not really shown. I don't tend to like the openness that the characters talk to each other about their feelings. I'm afraid I'm ENGLISH and we don’t show over emotion. I think it is more of an American thing, but I suppose its not a bad thing.
The pivotal character is Callie and how she is the apparent glue, but I found it nauseating how she was made out to be a martyr with a perfect husband, kids and career. Steffi apparently shies away from responsibility, yet she runs a café (isn’t that quite responsible), she is asked to look after a dog and a house with animals and she doesn’t really hesitate but dives in (isn’t that quite responsible), as soon as she arrives at the new house she looks for a way to make money (isn’t that quite responsible).
There is no just getting by, she doesn't completely restart her life and just because she not settled i.e doesn’t have a husband, it means she’s not responsible?
I had no idea what this book what about when I picked it up, I just knew her as a romance author, but I really had to force myself to continue reading till the end. I think perhaps the book could have been better just focusing on the sister and best friend or mother and sister, not tom, dick and harry and the dog too. All the developments in the characters such as Steffi settling down, how Reece copes with his wife’s death is all dealt with in a few pages at the end. I applaud her for writing this type of story and it is clearly a subject close to her heart, but I think because of that the story suffers.
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