This is a chick lit/thriller novel about a woman in London who finds herself overwhelmed by motherhood, hires a nanny, struggles with her marriage and meets an intriguing American who speaks the Victorian language of flowers. There are plot twists galore, but this is such soapy fun you won't really mind. ( )

This book was not what I was expecting. I picked this up thinking it was going to be a nice quick read about a workaholic woman with twin babies whose newly hired nanny was sleeping with the husband. Instead, there was so much more drama.

Usually I like the alternating viewpoints in books. I like when chapters jump back and forth between characters, you get a better feel for them. It is much easier to connect with them that way. But with this book, when a new character is narrating a chapter, the author goes back through dialogue from the previous chapter and you basically read the whole scene again (dialogue written out, again) just to get two or three sentences of how the new character is reacting to the situation. It really started to drive me crazy, especially since not all characters were given the same amount of time. They would just have one random chapter that they had to sum up their whole situation in.

Also what really bothered me was the drama. Nobody seemed to have the decency to just spit out whatever they were thinking. Nobody said what they really felt or wanted, they just bickered back and forth until it blew up in their faces. And this was especially frustrating when you had to go from chapter to chapter rehashing everything over and over again in different points of view.

Lastly, there was just way too much going on:
A workaholic mom
a nanny who is dating a drunk who beats her because he was raped crossing a park at night
the grandmother is a stuck up bitch
the brother has ALS but doesn't tell anyone and lets them all think he is a drunk who now the nanny has the hots for
the husband is stealing money from his rich wife's account because he lost a million plus in a bad stock deal
the husband kidnaps one of the babies and takes him to Lebanon but is conveniently tracked down by the customer who has randomly fallen in love with the wife and happens to have connections in all the right places
one of the babies has a rare salt diabetes disorder which is then believed to have been a poisoning by the mother until once again that love struck customer calls one of his convenient contacts who just happens to be a specialist at the hospital the baby was taken to

and much more. Then to top it all off, the wife still decides she wants to work it out with the money stealing, baby kidnapping husband even though now she is love struck with that customer. I don't know, maybe I'm just having an off day or whatever, but that is just way too much drama to be taken seriously. I can't say I hated the book because it was interesting at times to see what was going to happen and it was a quick read. It held my interest. I just don't think I will be rushing out any time soon to get this author's other books. ( )