Sarah Webb (1)

A light-weight novel about three friends - all women - who live in a small irish town. One manages a bookshop, one works at a shoe shop and teaches men how to date, and the third is married, and a local councillor.

Lots of potential, but I found the characters sadly flat and not particularly likeable. The men are either too good to be true or complete jerks; the only really interesting characters, in my view, were four-year-old Callum and the grandmother Lily.

There's a lot of dialogue, much of it small talk and entirely unnecessary to either plot or character development. However the pace is fairly good and there are a few interesting incidents, even if the continuity isn't great and the style is rather too informal.

Not one I would recommend, but others think highly of it.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2020/02/it-had-to-be-you-by-sarah-webb.html… (meer)

This is a new author for me, and I really enjoyed the story. There are actually three very different women who each have had a past relationship with the attractive, charming Mark Mulhearne. When all four characters receive invitations for their 10 year high school reunion, they all have an agenda to get there. I found that the female characters were a little extreme, but believable. My only difficulty was the abrupt changes in attitude that each experienced during the short span of time in which the novel took place. I had no difficulty switching between chapters that included past and present details of each of the women as well as switching between each of the three women's stories. It made for clear times that I could easily (or not so easily) put the book down. I wasn't surprised by the ending, but that didn't matter - sometimes you just need to read a story with a fairy tale ending - it was just what I needed!… (meer)