I've always had a soft spot for Anna Walsh, space cadet turned PR hotshot - Is There Anybody Out There had me unashamedly weeping on a train. I would have been thrilled to read about any Walsh sister but I was really pleased that Marian Keyes had returned to Anna. There seemed something unfinished in her story somehow.
When lockdown hits Anna is still in New York, working in PR for expensive skincare brands, still with her long term partner, new age new man Angelo. But, as it did for so many of us, lockdown brings to the surface everything she has been ignoring - the stress of her job, the waning of her relationship, peri menopause, home sickness, and so, Anna quits her high flying job, rents out her apartment, consciously uncouples from Angelo and returns to Ireland the unloving arms of her family who think she is is making a huge mistake and also are seriously annoyed at the loss of their access to free skincare products. But several months in Anna has found it harder to land a new job than the recruitment companies had led her to believe and with her money running out, is ensconsed in her sister Margaret's spare room. The chance of a short term role at a new luxury wellness retreat is the break she needs, even if it is on the other side of the country. The only problem is one of the investors, Narky Joey, father of her ex best friend's daughter, notorious womaniser and Anna's own biggest regret. Luckily it's just for a couple of days - but the job is harder than she had envisioned, the small seaside town trickier and yet more welcoming than she could have guessed and Joey, no longer narky but a goboy and still far too sexy for his or anyone else's good, especially considering his current vow of celibacy.
Every word of this was an utter delight. Told with all the humour, wit and emotion you would expect from Marian, by the end I was ready to move to the small town myself despite the very vivid descriptions of the rain, rooting for Anna to find the happiness she deseves. As always, Marian unfolds the backstory slowly, adding depth to a compelling narrative, I didn't want it to end and couldn't put it down. Highly recommended.

Thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for an early review copy.

I enjoyed reading this book.

It was lovely to meet back up with the characters and learn more about Anna.

The story was well written with lots of laughter moments.

I recommend this book.

What a joy to be back with the Walsh sisters, and their mammy of course!
Anna has run away from her New York life, leaving her fabulous job, apartment and boyfriend behind. She needs a change and she needs to deal with changes that peri-menopause are throwing up. Helping her friends deal with PR crisis while they deal with a severely sick daughter seems like the least she can do. Pitching up in their local town to try and persuade the locals that their new health retreat is going to benefit them, she’s quickly realised what a formidable and interesting group of residents Maumtully has. Even worse, the one support she has is an old (almost) flame who she has some serious history with.
This is quite a ride, as always Marian Keyes doesn’t give you a sickly sweet romcom. The well rounded characters have their own battles and issues, not least Anna herself as she faces up to her past with Joey and some absolutely unforgivable behaviour.
I loved the residents, particular Courtney, the put upon manager of the local hotel.
Of course we get lashings of theWalsh sisters and their fabulous mammy, always out for a freebie and an adventure. The chapters when they come to visit for St Patrick’s weekend almost read like a short story in their own right.
The relationship between Anna and Joey is cleverly handled to the point that the tension is unbearably high by the concluding chapters. The end is wonderful and leaves you hoping that there is more of the Walsh family to come.

A very enjoyable book by Keyes, with the main character in her 40's and facing the end of a relationship, the hangover of past relationships and the challenge of a career change. Strongly written family and friends, with a minor mystery wrapped in comedy set in rural Ireland. Keyes notes on individual quirks and the hard-won wisdoms of aging are spot on. Recommend!

Reading a Marian Keyes book is like stepping into a lovely warm bath. My Favourite Mistake follows the ‘will they, won’t they’ romance of Anna and Joey, surrounded by the chaos, warmth and love of a huge Irish family - just loved it!

My love of books definitely started with the Walsh family. I was therefore super excited to read this book, but also slightly apprehensive as I didn’t want to spoil my previous fondness.
I didn’t need to worry; this book is the perfect sequel. I was drawn into Anna and her menopausal drama throughout. It’s an emotional, but also funny book that I would recommend.

When I put in the request on NetGalley to have early access to #MyFavouriteMistake by MarianKeyes, I really couldn’t believe my luck when I was accepted to read it.

Starting another Marian’ Keyes book is like settling into an extremely comfortable, familiar armchair welcoming back old friends, who are nearly part of the family now. … rediscovering the Walsh family, how they’ve grown changed, how they haven’t changed! Their new adventures were an absolute delight for this Easter holiday.

Life for Anna since Aidan‘s death has been a yo-yo of despair and joy, with a high busy Manhattan life, and the reality of the Walsh family, who supply her with love and support, and a great deal of teasing.

It’s great to see how Anna has developed, how her backstory merged with that of Rachel and Helen and Margaret and of course Mammy. They don’t seem to be many gaps in the jigsaw at this point, but I hope Marian will find more and fill them for us because when she writes these stories, it’s just a joy to sink back into that chair, into that life, into that situation and spend it with these lovely people.


Thank you, Marian for keep giving us what we love.

Thanks to #NetGalley. For giving me the opportunity to read this book ahead of publication.

I was delighted to accept it and delighted to read it and delighted to tell everybody how fantastic it is.

Without a doubt this book will be one of my reads of the year. It is funny, emotional and heart-warming and for me it is the perfect read. We return to the Walsh family who are all individual characters in themselves. Anna is our main character who is returning home from New York to the village of Maumtully. The story covers her return home and how she helps old friends Brigit and Colm set up a spa retreat.

This book is just wonderful, so well written and a complete triumph. I laughed, I cried and I stayed up well past my bedtime to read it and have felt bereft since leaving the Maumtully community. Cannot rate it highly enough.

Always with the note of steel in the fun exterior, this book by Marian Keyes not only reintroduces us to the Walshes, but also points out the immense changes experienced by women going through menopause and points out that it can be quite refreshing to get as mad as hell, and not take it any more. Oh, and you can still have sex after fifty! Her depiction of small town Irish life is also the equal of any rural Irish novelist writing today and I'd love to read more about M Town.

I did enjoy this book, but I do wonder whether Anna's story needed a sequel . . . I didn't always like Anna in this story. I thought she was mean to Joey. Some of the scenes with the wider Walsh family were OTT and unnecessary in my opinion. There was lots of humour and I did like the perimenopause being highlighted. That said, I wondered if this was focussed on a bit too much. It was a shame that ageing seemed to be taboo, as in, you need Botox so your face doesn't look so lined, as several members of the Walsh family had it and Anna couldn't live without it. There were lots of secondary characters and it was hard to remember who was who. I liked the ending, but wish we'd had more time with Anna and her other half. With thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed reading about the Walsh family again.
This time the main character was Anna.
Homesick and no longer happy with her life in New York she returns home to her family in Dublin. She is looking for a new job and her sister gets her some part time hours working in a small seaside town on a new retreat being built on farmland.
Lots of funny moments and family dynamics that kept me entertained.
Thank you to NetGalley and Michael Joseph, Penguin Books for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

My Favourite Escape is a follow on of Anna’s story 20years on from when she lost her husband in a road traffic accident (Is anybody out there)
Now on the verge of the menopause and all the ensuing symptoms and having split from her boyfriend she decides to leave her well paid job in New York and return to her family in Ireland.
As usual with this author we have a lot of humour, angst and heartbreak.
With her expertise in PR she is asked to help her sisters business out as it is being targeted by locals who are trying to scupper the development of their luxury air BnB’s. To help her in this endeavour is Joey Armstrong, they have known each other for years and not got on.
Now both more mature they are able to work together, their past is alluded to many times but no information is given which is very frustrating, eventually the whole past unfolds but it take some pages before we have the true reveal.
I did find it hard to keep track of all the characters and when it came to the big discovery of who was causing all the trouble I had to look back to remind myself who they were. At 75% in I’m afraid I became a bit fed up and skipped pages we had weeks of really nothing happening and all I wanted to know was when or if Anna and Joey would get together. Eventually at around 98% we had the answer which was done and dusted very quickly….but nicely.
My thanks to net galley and publisher for the opportunity to review this book honestly.

4.5* My Favourite Mistake is everything you want from the amazing Marian Keyes, bringing us bang up to date with the Walsh family.

Anna has grown tired of New York. The pandemic kept her from Ireland and her relationship had frittered out, the only thing keeping her in situ is her job. She decided to throw in the towel and return home to her family. They think she’s mad! Struggling to get a job, she is offered the opportunity of trying to smooth the way for Brigit and Colm, who are setting up a high end retreat on farmland adjacent to a small town. Sympathy is high as their daughter is unwell, but someone amongst the locals is trying to sabotage their development and it’s up to Anna to get everyone back on side. However, unbeknownst to Anna, the man behind the funding for the project is get old sometimes friend and other times foe, ‘Narky Joey’.

Told mainly in the present but with nods to some of the backstories in Anna’s relationships, the plot absolutely zips along.

I absolutely loved this book. Marian Keyes has a way of sweeping the reader into a world of characters, emotion and banter that is bettered by no one. My Favourite Mistake starts a little slowly, but soon gets going. The small town cast of characters are fabulous and are so richly told, that you feel like you know every single one of them. It’s a chunk at 600 pages but there isn’t a wasted word. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Thanks to the publisher Michael Joseph and Netgalley for an ARC.

Every time Marian writes a Walsh family book I’m nervous, in case it will somehow ‘spoil’ my past experiences of the family and yet each time they just get better. This one in particular struck a chord, with Anna in peri-menopause and struggling with her identity. I loved every single word and laughed and cried buckets.

Purely by coincidence, I had recently reread the first Anna Walsh book (Is There Anybody Out There?) and found it delightful to return to the characters so quickly.

My Favourite Mistake finds Anna, almost 20 years on from the first book, in a post-pandemic identity crisis that leads her to leave New York and return to Ireland, where her PR skills are called upon by a family friend and she must travel to a quiet coastal backwater to deal with locals who are up in arms about a new hotel development.

The plot from hereon in will be familiar to anyone who enjoys a cheesy Hallmark movie - big city girl winds up in a small, quirky town with equally quirky inhabitants, and high jinks ensue. It was delightful to read, and always funny (especially the periodic invasions of the Walsh family). Some may find the ending too neat, but I enjoyed having all the loose ends tied up.

One for Marian Keyes fans only. I found it overlong with too many characters who led uninteresting lives. It did not grab my attention which is a shame as I have previously enjoyed many of her previous books.

Another warm, witty and wise book from Marian Keyes. She always manages to make me feel part of the Walsh family and I miss them when they're gone! The "will they, won't they" plot features in many parts of the book, and while it is a well worn trope the author manages to imbue it with enough human emotion to make me want to find out what happens. And I loved the last few lines
Thank you to netgalley and Michael Joseph for an advance copy of this book

What a fantastic visit to the infamous Walsh family. This book focuses on Anna the one who went away to New York to work. Anna has had it hard she was widowed young and found it all hard to cope with. Then the pandemic hits and she no longer feels like New York is where she wants to be. She realises she wants to go home. Hats when the Walsh family fun begins with Mammy and her sisters. She’s always fell in and out of a patch of seeing and wanting Joey Armstrong but it fades and she unsure what she really wants.
Ending up with a pr job in the middle of Ireland she meets and befriends some good people including Joey.
Filled with sadness and hilarity this is Marian at her best. Loved catching up with the Walsh’s and making new friends.
Highly recommended

Three and a half stars.

This is a follow-up to Anybody Out There?, 18 years later. Anna Walsh was widowed at a very young age, but she managed to find a new life in New York as a beauty PR maven. Now, in her late 40s, post-lockdown her relationship with her boyfriend Angelo has amicably come to an end, she no longer cares about her job and *gasp* she's fallen out of love with New York.

So Anna returns home to Dublin where she realises it may not be as easy as she imagined to get a new job, until her mammy gets her to help out family who are in the process of building a spa retreat on the west coast of Ireland which has turned into a PR disaster, culminating in locals defacing some of the partly constructed cabins. The only snag, the money man behind the venture is Joey, a friend of her sister Rachel's partner, a man she has been avoiding for many, many years.

This is pure Marian Keyes, complete with quirky villagers, and flashbacks to when Anna first moved to New York.

I really enjoyed this, and then partway through it seemed to get a bit bogged down in rehashing Anna's relationship with her former best friend and with Joey, it felt sort of obvious to me what had happened but it felt a bit laboured and could just as easily have been explained up front.

Otherwise, this was sexy, funny, cute, everything I want from the Walsh girls.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

Marian Keyes is, to my mind, one of the finest writers at work today. She has a gift for handling the grittier and darker texture of what makes us human with a light touch and a deep respect for our differences and commonalities. Her work sings with humour and warmth, and some of the sentences in this are absolutely sublime. This is a gentler story than some, but no less powerful for that. She explores aging, menopause, sexuality and regret but always with a hunger for life, and a delight in what it means to be human, the beautiful frivolous details that make life sing. The ending of this had such a beautiful resonance to me. I kept thinking about it in the days after I read it. People can be incredibly judgemental about the phrase 'comfort reads', and it belies how skilful and powerful a writer you have to be to write a book that challenges, delights and yes, comforts the reader at a bone-deep level. A triumph.