Anna's journey from the bustling streets of New York to the cozy corners of Maumtully is a refreshing change of pace. The author effortlessly weaves together Anna's present-day struggles with glimpses into her past, keeping me hooked with every page turn. Despite this being a long book with well over 500 pages, I found myself fully immersed in the story, savoring each moment like a warm hug. Keyes' writing is like a comforting embrace with a delightful dose of humor sprinkled throughout. While some might find it being a very slow paced read, I welcomed the chance to sink into the narrative and lose myself in Anna's world. Italian took me over a week to complete it but I was happy to get back into it as soon as I had a free moment.
"My Favourite Mistake" is a heartwarming tale of second chances, filled with laughter, love, and the beauty of embracing life's unexpected twists.

Very grateful to the publisher for this copy, opinions are my own.

Sequel to ‘Anybody out there’ - discover more of the Walsh family - it’s like catching up with old friends.
During lockdown, Anna Walsh starts to feel claustrophobic in New York
“For so long I took pride in my job, then … all of a sudden, I felt heartsick, weary. The end was fast and it was total.”
So she decides to move back to Ireland and the fun begins when old friends Brigit and Colm offer her job setting up a luxury coastal retreat.
It’s a heartwarming and funny tale of relationships and family.
Marian excels at creating honest and refreshing characters that you can empathise with.
Loved the small town vibes and the witty insights, the banter and teasing, lots of laugh out loud moments.
Thanks @marian_keyes @michaeljbooks & @netgalley for the warm hug of a book

Like your favourite mug of hot chocolate on a winters day with your favourite blanket wrapped round you on the couch, this read is a huge hug to your senses.
Another hook up with the wonderful Walshes, Anna taking the staring role this time.
Funny, poignant, delightful, in short, just brilliant.

My Favourite Mistake: By a young whippersnapper named
@MarianKeyes
who definitely has a future in this book business. You heard it here first! Another seriously funny and funnily serious Walsh story, packed full of old faves and new ones to cherish. Utter joy on every page.

I was very excited to receive this latest Marian Keyes book, having read and loved all her previous ones and being a big fan. It’s no exaggeration to say that I devoured it and read it in two days. It really didn’t disappoint.

Many of the characters were familiar as it involved the Walsh family. However, the book could easily be read as a standalone for those who want to dive straight in at this point. There were also many new characters from the small Irish town where the book is set and these were portrayed in a way that brought humour and added to the feel of the place. This strong sense of place is something I particularly appreciate when I'm reading.

Marian Keyes has a great ability to combine humour and heartbreak and this book made me laugh and cry. This level of emotional engagement is a sign that I am really invested in a book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to readers.

Thank you very much to the NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of My Favourite Mistake in exchange for an honest review.

What a lovely book. Marian Keyes is my go to woman for a hug in a book, for normalising family stuff and just escaping from the wild wild outside. Open this book up and you’re stopped straight back into the Walsh family saga! I’ve read some of the others when they first came out and I can’t wait to get this one to match for the stack! Can’t wait for everyone else to read this latest installment

I read all of the Walsh books as they were released the first time so to see Marian was revisiting them delighted me.
And how I have missed them! The same funny, addictive characters but on new journeys.
I absolutely adored diving back in to Anna’s world. The sweet one of the bunch, she is definitely not boring and provides the same laugh out loud moments of all the Walsh family. I loved her and Joeys dynamic and I was rooting for them all through the story.
Courtney was such a great character and I really liked her and Anna’s friendship.
Can’t wait for the next now.
I am grateful to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me an earc of this novel but it has in no way influenced my review or opinion.

The Walsh Family is back! This time the focus is on Anna. Anna is having a midlife crisis and finds out that she is perimenopausal. She makes some big changes in her life and finds herself back in Ireland without a job or meaning.
Thankfully fate steps in and she is roped into helping out Colm and Brigit in Western Ireland. The only problem could be Narky Joey - who she will need to work with.
This stirs up all sorts of memories, both bad and good, for her.
This is about relationships, friendships and families.
Another triumph from Marian Keyes.

"'𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒄? 𝑻𝒊𝒄𝒌! 𝑬𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈-𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒎 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑? 𝑻𝒊𝒄𝒌! 𝑷𝒊𝒗𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈? 𝑻𝒊𝒄𝒌!'
'𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕'𝒔 𝒑𝒊𝒗𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈?' 𝑴𝒖𝒎 𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒙𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒍𝒚. '𝑰𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒚 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒅 𝒖𝒑 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒃𝒖𝒎𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒆?'"

Post-pandemic and perimenopausal, Anna Walsh is feeling adrift in her glamorous NYC PR job and longs to be home in the bosom of her family in Dublin. Deciding to take the plunge and move back home, Anna finds herself no less confused about her future path, when a friend asks her to help with a PR job of sorts at a coastal retreat in Connemara.

My Favourite Mistake is the sequel to Anybody Out There. I had never read Anna’s story before, but I absolutely loved it and was thrilled to be approved for an advanced copy of the new book on NetGalley. I have a love/hate relationship with ‘big books’ (this one is just over 600 pages). I always dread them before reading, but I always inevitably become completely absorbed in the world between the pages and mourn the ending when it does arrive. I haven’t read all of Marian’s books yet, but whenever I have read them, I always find myself carrying them with me so I can read a page or two at any free moment. The pace is arguably… quite relaxed, shall we say, so fans of seat-of-the-pants books may find their attention wandering, however, this adds to the immersion in the narrative that the author builds in my opinion.

The book follows a dual timeline: the present-day where Anna decides to move home to Ireland, and jumps back to various points in the past as we slowly piece together how certain things have ended up as they are between Anybody Out There and this book. There is no doubt that Marian Keyes’ writing is just hug-in-a-book stuff; perfect for sitting on the couch under a blanket with a warm cup of something comforting in your hands. The comparison with the warmth of Maeve Binchy is obvious, but Marian peppers more laugh-out-loud moments throughout her books for good measure. I never get bored of reading about the Walsh family (Watermelon is probably my favourite and a re-read is definitely overdue), I’m always particularly delighted to meet Mammy Walsh again. If ever there was a quintessential legendary Irish mammy committed to paper, it is she.

Marian Keyes fans will not be disappointed with My Favourite Mistake - an all-round feel good which also manages to tackle some big hitters such as dealing with perimenopause.

So while I have read a number of Marian Keyes' books this is the first one about the Walsh family for me. It is a very entertaining novel that covers the trials and dramas of an Irish middle aged family and I enjoyed it immensely. Her legions of fans will not be disappointed I'm sure. Now to read all the earlier Walsh family shenanigans!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Michael Joseph/PenguinRandomHouse for the introduction to the Walsh family and the opportunity to read and review My Favourite Mistake.

I’ve loved all of the Marian Keyes books about the Walsh family and in My Favourite Mistake it was so lovely to be back with them all again.
All their beautifully hats and dramas but with their love for each other shining through all the time was wonderful (I never had any doubt that it would be anything less).
It was like a hug in a book and I adored it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thank you to Penguin Michael Joseph and Net Galley for letting me read this.

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
Published by Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House
Publication Date 11/4/24

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Full disclosure- Marian Keyes is my all-time favourite author. I could probably do Mastermind on her series of books about the Walsh family.
Her books never fail to pick me up, her unique blend of wit, humour and relatable characters and stories always resonate with me
This one does not disappoint. It was great to revisit Anna and see what life had in store for her and I especially like the fact that the sisters are ageing alongside me and facing the same midlife issues.

I absolutely loved it! I can’t wait to buy the physical copy for my collection.

Many thanks to the author, Publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with this advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

i have been reading Marian Keyes books for as long as i remember, i love how you can lose yourself in her stories, how invested you become with the characters lives.
this is a story of love, life and its mistakes.
an absolute cracker of a read!

The day that Marian Keyes first put pen to paper should be memorialised.. It makes no difference to me whether she is writing fiction, autobiographical stories or even a cookery book, I love them all. So I was so excited to see that she had written more books about the Walsh family. If you have never encountered Mammy Walsh you are seriously missing out. This story centres around the fourth Walsh daughter Anna who decides on a whim to give up her fancy P.R job in New York, dump her boyfriend and head back to Dublin. As Anna has been working in beauty P.R and could always keep her family in expensive cosmetics her mother and sisters are not too happy to see her. But she is home to stay and needs a job so agrees to head over to the west of Ireland to supervise the building of a new luxury spa hotel. Amid sabotaged equipment, unfriendly locals and "real man" lothario Joey Armstrong this job is not going to be easy but Anna is determined to make a success of it. And there are plenty of laughs to be had along the way especially when Mammy Walsh decides that a wee trip would do her and the other girls good and they land down mob handed. Needless to say, this book gets 5 big stars from me and now I'm off to dig out my ancient copy of Watermelon and re read it for the umpteenth time

Reading a Marian Keyes book is like coming home after a long day and being looked after by a loved one, and this new instalment in the Walsh Family series is no different. Full of humour and you’re pulled into a book with characters that you just don’t want to leave. I loved it.

First off just know that this is a Marian Keyes fan account. The warmth radiating from her books is like no other.

My Favourite Mistake sees us back with Anna, the Walsh sister with the best job in the world in New York. Except she’s tiring of her New York life. So, she packs it in and heads back to Ireland. She ends up in a PR job for a fancy coastal retreat and in doing so runs into someone from her past. Anna does what she knows best when life threatens to swallow her whole; throw herself into her work.

I love being back in the Walsh family fold, it just gives me the urge to re-read all of their stories. Mercifully this was nowhere near as sad as Anna’s previous book, Anybody Out There?, because that really delivers a gut punch. There are some flashbacks for context from the intervening years between the two books which feels like unseen footage.

This could technically be read stand alone but it is made much richer for reading its predecessor. If, however, you want the richest reading experience you simply have to do the entire Walsh family series 😌

Well I am ashamed to say this was my first ever Marian Keyes read! Plunging straight into the Walsh Family number 7 felt daunting initially, but I honestly didn’t feel like I was on the outside one bit. And I can see how there could be many stories told about this family!

In this story, we meet Anna Walsh. 48 years old, recently single and fed up with her high-flying PR job in New York, Anna is feeling burnt out and missing her family and home in Ireland. So off she heads, home for a break and some new inspiration.

Soon she finds herself in a tiny remote town, helping out her sister’s friend and her family. Whilst trying to cope with the awful news of their daughter’s cancer diagnosis, their new luxury holiday venture has been targeted by disgruntled locals and they need someone to come and help smooth over the relationship between the company and the community. In steps Anna.

However, what she doesn’t expect is to be working with Joey Armstrong - a figure from her past who she doesn’t expect is going to want to work with her. But why? We have to wait to find out!

This was such a joy to read. The way the story flipped back in time to show us Anna’s history - from first meeting Joey, to the violent loss of her husband, to the breakdown of her closest friendship - we go through everything with her. There is the perfect blend of seriousness and sadness with humour and all sorts of amazing hilarious and brilliant characters along the way.

My heart was warmed, I laughed loads, and I just want more Walshes to read about now to be honest! A brilliant introduction to a new favourite author.

I was so excited for this - the Walsh family continues to grow up, and we focus once again on updating ourselves with Anna's life. It is the usual mostly-jolly story, bubbly characters, laugh out loud moments and characters you would either love - or hate - to have in your life. Infinitely relatable.

This was, perhaps, a little slow in places, and the narrative was a bit jumpy in terms of slipping forwards very quickly at points. Certain points (the menopause!) were perhaps over-written in places - but these things do not detract from the beauty of the book. You're always in for a gleeful romp with this family - and Keyes definitely delivers once again!

Anna Walsh has a fantastic life in New York. A swish beauty PR job, her own apartment and a handsome, loving partner Angelo. But during the pandemic, the veneer on Anna's life cracks. Although her job has always been intense, the stress has ramped up. And living with Angelo during lockdowns brings things to an end. Anna doesn't know exactly what she wants except to be back home in Ireland. So she breaks up with Angelo, hands in her notice and goes to live in Ireland for the first time in 20 years. Once home, her sister Rachel enlists her to help with a PR for her friends Brigit and Colm. Anna heads west to Maumtully, to investigate why the new luxury resort business venture is being targeted and to try smooth relations with the locals. There's just one problem: one of Brigit's business associates is Joey Armstrong, who has a complicated relationship with Anna.

While you can read this book without reading Anybody Out There (the book where we first see Anna's story), it is possible to read this without AOT. Having just reread it myself, I had Anna's story fresh in my head but in a way I think it may have hindered my enjoyment of this slightly. There is a dual plot line in this, with flashbacks to Anna's time in New York. Some parts of AOT are mentioned in this and slowed down the pace. Also it is clear there's some history we don't know that's happened with Anna and Joey, set after the timeline of AOT and it's slowly drip fed to us. I would have prefered knowing this earlier, rather than having the characters allude to them mysteriously before they finally talk about it. The pacing is a bit mixed. Aside from the flashbacks, the first half of the book is set a week in March, when Anna is first arrives at Maumtully and the second half is just after this up to November, so that moves a lot quicker.

I did enjoy the book. It's not just set on the romance element of the book, but there's also the mystery of what's happening to the business, Anna's intigration into this small town and all the characters there and of course the Walsh family themselves and all their antics. Keyes is honest and refreshing when it comes to portraying Anna, in her late 40s and the different issues that come with being this age: romance, health, friendship and self belief. Tender hearted and endearing, with the trademark Keyes humour thrown in, it;s one for Walsh family fans for sure!

Another fantastic read from the super-talented Marian Keyes. Another instalment of the Walsh family, with the focus this time around on Anna. I loved the dual timeline of the novel, jumping back to Anna's time in New York and the incidents that led her to choose to return to Ireland and her family. The book is humming of the irish humour you would expect from a Marian Keyes novel and I savoured every page. Reading a Marian Keyes is as comforting as warm socks and hot soup on a cold day. Brilliant.