If you have ever asked yourself "where has the time gone, what the hell have I done with my life and why does everyone else have it all together but me?!", then you'll love this book.

Nell had it all - so she thought. Running her own business, living in California and engaged to a handsome man...but she finds herself returning to the UK broke, homeless and single. All her friends are married with young children - even her younger brother is settling down, and she can't quite bring herself to tell her parents the truth about what happened in America. She rents a room from a quirky energy-saving obsessive guy called Edward, also a forty-something, and gets a job writing obituaries for one of the newspapers. On one of these stories, she meets a widow in her eighties, Cricket, whose famous playwright husband has just died, and a very sweet friendship develops between the two women. Through Cricket and their various adventures together, Nell gets some much-needed perspective and realises it is possible to be happy, vibrant and full of life at any age - it really is just a number. And perhaps the life she lost and left behind in California wasn't her dream life after all.

Nell's friends and social circle also hold up a mirror to our social media-dominated society where a sense of perspective seems to be a rarer and rarer thing. Those that we presume to have perfect lives very rarely reveal what is going on behind the filters and hashtags. It is very easy to forget that everyone's lives are messy and full of stress, sorrow and overwhelm, at least some of the time. Maybe we need to start being honest about the less Instagrammable moments of life. Nell reaches that conclusion and decides to start a podcast about being a forty-something f**kup which, to her great surprise, is a hit because her honesty hits a nerve.

I related to a lot of Nell's struggles, particularly to how she mourns her changing friendships on her return to the UK, as she is the only one who doesn't have children (and as we find out, this isn't by choice) and finds the tunnel-vision of her friends who are parents quite isolating because she can't join in the conversations 99% of the time. This is captured by the author very well.

I enjoyed the friendship between Nell and Cricket very much, and the wisdom Cricket dispenses - as usual, I find novels to be full of sage life advice! A few curveballs are thrown Nell's way - I won't reveal them to avoid spoilers - but needless to say, she does start to realise that everything one holds dear can change in an instant, that life is a gift to be cherished and to worry less about what her life looks like to others and more how it feels to be living it for herself, on her own terms. And that everything she wants is possible - in fact, it may have been in front of her face the entire time! I also enjoyed how finding love didn't magically solve all Nell's problems - she just comes to the realisation that life is complicated, she won't ever have it all figured out and that's OK. A very valuable message.

All in all, this is a charming, entertaining and very enjoyable read. Perfect for the sunlounger!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. I normally like everything this author has written but not too sure about this book unfortunately, finished it, made no impression on me at all and kept waiting for it to get better.

If you have ever thought "where did my life go and is this it for the rest of it" this is for you
Nell is forty something, living with her handsome fiancé in America loving her life, until suddenly it all goes wrong and she returns home to England, single, jobless and homeless.
Her friends seem to have all got married and had children while she was away and now she is struggling to fit in with them.
Nell rents a room and takes a job writing obituaries for the local paper. When a famous local playwright dies Nell goes to meet his widow to find out more about him. Cricket is not at all what Nell is expecting and they instantly hit it off. At 80 something Nell did not expect her to be so vibrant and full of fun.
With the help of Cricket Nell discovers that maybe her dream life isn’t the one she left behind after all.

This is the first book I read by this author and it doesn’t disappoint.

Nell has arrived back in England from California. Her dreams of marriage and motherhood are in shatters. On the cusp of 40 and with all of her friends now married with children, Nell’s not sure exactly where her life is going.

When Nell meets eighty-something newly widowed Cricket with her outrageous life and pearls of wisdom, Nell finds herself slowly coming out of her funk. As their friendship develops, can they help each other look to a brighter future?

A great book full of humour with a great cast of characters which was an enjoyable and entertaining read.

This is such a delightful read. Enduring life-changing events all at once, our protagonist returns to her homeland where she feels left out of life around her. Making friends with an Octogorian who is rapidly losing her friends, lives will be changed forever. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC egalley.

I turned 40 myself in February 2019 which does make you think what have I done with my life and what am I currently doing?
I really enjoyed this book, it made me laugh and some parts made me sad. am so in love with this book…
I had a preconceived idea of the main character and was so glad that I was wrong about her, I can relate to parts of her life - how she just gets on with it. Nell really grew on me.
I think one of the other reviews of this book also touched on the part about inspirational quotes, which are everywhere with stupid hashtags of loving life etc and I am so glad to find someone else who also hates all this.

Really likeable character bringing humour about her forties. Highly recommend

I really enjoyed this book about how Nell finds her feet after her business and relationship fall apart. It covers about a year of her life, and it was great to see her personal growth over that time. Although there is romance in this story, it’s not really about that. I really liked the fact that falling in love didn’t magically fix everything for Nell, that it was more a gradual acceptance that life is complicated and confusing, and that’s ok.

This was a relaxing and fulfilling read, and I’d recommend it to anyone getting a bit sick of reading about 20-somethings partying and falling in instalove (not that those

This is just a perfect book. Entirely relatable and guaranteed to be a hit. Would happily recommend this book to anyone.