Book Review: Love, Lies and Linguine
Title: Love, Lies and Linguine
Author: Hilary Spiers
Rating: 3/5 stars
Release date: February 1st 2017
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Goodreads Synopsis:
The delightfully irascible sisters are on the move . . . which just goes to show you're never too old to start again.
Having found, in Hester & Harriet, that sometimes opening your door to the unexpected has a great result, the intrepid sisters decide to further expand their horizons and book tickets, pack bags and venture forth to Italy for their annual holidays. With a huge secret hanging between them, an unlikely new love on the landscape for Hester and new beginnings also beckoning for Harriet, Italy is certainly providing more of those pesky open doors. But which ones will Hester & Harriet walk through? Meanwhile, back home in England, Daria and Milo are celebrating—they've received official refugee status with papers to confirm they can make England their home. And Ben is hurtling towards a different sort of celebration—one he's trying to backpedal out of as fast as he possibly can.
Review:
This book was so much fun. Harriet and Hester were the quirkiest, most adorable set of characters I've ever come across. I've never read a story with the POVs of elderly women before - it was really refreshing! I also love how naive the author portrays the two sisters to be. The way I see it, it's a story told by a pair of ambitious teenage girls trapped in an older woman's body. Bottom line though (and I should really stop being so biased xD ), Hester and Harriet are amazing characters - witty, spunky and ultimately unforgettable.
The story I didn't to be as enjoyable to read, though. I couldn't get invested with the other characters and I seem to only want to read the parts with the sisters involved. The reason might be partly because I know little about the previous book hence why I found the story to be a bit slow and hard to decipher sometimes, but the characters just weren't very engaging in general. It's ironic that I found it to be much easier to relate to the sisters rather than Ben and Jez. The whole plot was also really messy. I adore Spiers' british-esque writing (plus the fact that it went together with an equally amazing setting - Italy), but the twists and turns she intended to implement int he story just.. didn't work out very well.
Overall it was.. okay. There were some things I loved and others I didn't. I have to say though, if Spiers were to write stories (that leaned more to chick-lit) with spunky protagonists and a rich setting, I'd be down for it.
Thank you so much to Allen & Unwin for generously providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review! <3