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Een Nieuw Begin (2008)

by Amanda Brookfield(Favorite Author)

3.11 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Van Holkema & Warendorf

review 1: I do wish publishers would stop putting stickers on books declaring ‘Guaranteed great Read or your money back.’ Why? Because it is misleading and builds up expectations about a book, yet too often they are not a great read in my opinion at all. In this case the book was an okay read but far from great. I struggled to relate to the character of Charlotte at all. In fact she pretty much lost me when she left her son, Sam with a babysitter she had not met on someone else’s recommendation. My other problem was with Charlotte’s whole attitude. Hardly surprising to me that her husband would look elsewhere when she made her son the love of her life, attention and focus from the time he was a baby. No child should ever be in that position that rightly belongs to the one yo... moreu are married to. So yes, I had more than a few problems with this main character and not really sure why I kept reading. So the best I can say is it was okay.
review 2: Charlotte is approaching her 40th birthday, and not finding life particularly easy. Her divorce from Martin has just been finalised, but she finds it difficult to see him with his new partner. And their 13-year-old son Sam is having a tough time at school, no doubt related to the breakup of his parents' marriage. Charlotte would really like to make a new start so she puts her house on the market, and finds the house of her dreams... she also meets the estate agent Tim who seems to think that Charlotte may be the woman of his dreams. Her rather lost demeanor also attracts the attentions of her best friend's husband. Then her mother - whom she has always found difficult - has an accident... While the plot revolves around Charlotte and her gradual acceptance of her circumstances, there are a lot of subplots in this book, and such a big cast of people that I often found myself forgetting who was whom. It's quite a long novel (nearly 400 pages) and I read it over a week, just a few chapters at a time, so it was difficult to keep track of - for instance - the names of the people who owned the bookshop where Charlotte worked, or her various friends and their spouses. Still, I gradually warmed to the book and found it quite difficult to put down as I neared the end. Some of it was predictable, but there were a few surprises along the way; each chapter begins with a brief, first person account from Charlotte's past, in italics to distinguish it from the main text. I quite liked this device and felt it helped me to get to know her better. The one person I never liked was the estate agent. Recommended to anyone who likes light women's fiction that's primarily character-based. less

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