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After The Honeymoon (2014)

by Janey Fraser(Favorite Author)

4.4 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0099580845 (ISBN13: 9780099580843)

languge

English

genre

Middle Grade & Children's

publisher

Random House UK

review 1: When I was offered the chance to take part in Janey Fraser’s blog tour for her new novel After The Honeymoon, I was quite pleased! I’ve heard a lot of good things about Janey’s novels and I actually have her previous three on my shelf, but I haven’t had time to read them. Janey is actually popular women’s fiction writer Sophie King, and with so many novels under her belt I was really looking forward to trying her work. After The Honeymoon looked and sounded utterly amazing, but I was actually quite disappointed in the novel, if I’m honest.Probably my favourite part of After The Honeymoon was the Greek setting. It sounded like the most idyllic place to live – barring the fact you can’t flush loo paper down the toilet which is quite simply disgusting in the e... morextreme. Villa Rosa sounded like such a lovely, quaint place to stay and if all the guests (namely Melissa’s two kids!) hadn’t caused such a rucus, I could totally see the appeal and why it was popular. I didn’t mind the characters too much – I really liked Rosie, the owner of Villa Rosa, and I adored her son, Jack, who was the modest, likeable 15-year-old any mother would be proud to call their own! I did think the book started slowly, but as the secrets unravel and the in-fighting between all the couples begin, the novel does pick up some pace, although I did perhaps think it was a bit too much to shove into the last quarter of the book…The real problems I had with After The Honeymoon were the other characters. Emma and Tom are supposed to be on their honeymoon, yet Tom spends the entire honeymoon laid up in bed, allegedly sick. It confused me that Emma was so willing to just let him rot in bed the whole week. It was RIDICULOUS. I was embarrassed on her behalf. But, I was also embarrassed by Emma, too. It’s the first time she’s left her kids (which I understand) but she treats her mother, who’s looking after the kids, as if she’s incapable of doing it, and is always ringing and worrying and ringing and worrying some more. She frustrated the life out of me with her actions. I really wanted to like Winston, too, but he was just rude and awful, consistently whinging about Melissa’s two kids (who were brats, I absolutely stand by him in that regard) but he knew that getting into his marriage and he still got married, so he should have shut his mouth and got on with it.I also personally found the writing quite jarring and clunky. The novel doesn’t flow like most novels do. The novel is written in third-person, but it just felt wrong, switching from Emma, to Winston, to Rosie, with no rhyme or reason. It should have been like a helicopter view of them all, not separate entities. I also found the novel quite repetitive – Emma is always described as “moon-faced” and “plump”, whenever Winston saw her that’s how he described her and I wanted to punch him in the face. I really wanted to love the novel – Janey is a popular author, but this wasn’t really the novel for me. Many others will enjoy it, but it wasn’t really the read for me, which is a shame.
review 2: What can happen after the honeymoon? Is marriage really the answer to everything? Are you actually really sure that you know the person you're going away with? And are you sure that the person you think that you know doesn't hide any secrets, secrets that in fact could end the marriage?I am a big fan of Janey Fraser. She writes in a such an affordable, down - to - earth way about things that are our bread and butter, but she can do this in a very engaging, interesting way.After the Honeymoon follows the story of two couples spending their honeymoon on a beautiful Greek island and Rosie, owner of the pension. One of the couples are Emma and Tom. They already have two children but married just now: Emma doesn't believe in marriage and in her opinion a paper doesn't guarantee that you are going to stay together or love each other more. But Tom has actually twisted her arm and so they finally got married. They are both not on the gravy train and the honeymoon is a wedding present from all their friends: they are to spend one week in a private cottage of Villa Rose.What should be the happiest week of their lives turns out to be a week from hell. Tom has a food poisoning so he spends the whole time in bed and Emma is left alone to make new friends, visit the island and go sightseeing. She makes friends, indeed, especially with one of the cooks from the Villa.In fact, the private cottage should be booked for Winston and Melissa but somebody has made a mistake and now they must spend their week in Rosie's private room. Winston is a famous TV fitness star and Melissa is a make - up artist, divorcee with two children. They don't know each other too long but were sure they felt in love and so they get married. Winston hoped for a nice, private cottage where he could spend his honeymoon only with his wife. The things get a little complicated when it happens that Melissa's two spoiled children can't stay with their father, as it was already organised, and must be flown to Greece. Then - although Winston's assistant has reassured him that it is a PRIVATE island - there is another couple from UK who as well got his cottage! But never mind the cottage, the children from hell are already there and Winston slowly realises that he was never going to be one of the priorities on Melissa's list. Her children and their needs - no matter how irrelevant and stupid they were - are the most important thing. Melissa finds excuses for every single thing that her children do - good or bad, although they rather excel in doing bad things.Rosie is the owner of the Villa. She has a teenage son Jack who helps her to run the pension. After she got pregnant as a young girl her father forced her to leave home and after some time Rosie found her place on this small Greek island. She's not there when the guests arrive, comes back some days later. It is a big shock for her to see her guests, and especially Winston. He is the boy with whom she fell in love with when she was young but then they lost touch. Is he going to recognize her?Oh dear. There are so many characters in this book but they are all brilliantly written and there was not a single moment that I felt confused or didn't know who is who. And I don't only mean our main characters, the backstage characters are one of the best I have a pleasure to read about, they add some spice, some pepper, lightness and freshness to the story. They are very vivid, just pop out of the pages and feel like real 3-D people. All of them super developed, with their own meanings and opinions, strong and firm personalities. You can't stay neutral to them, I had feelings for them all, some of them I really liked and some I despised. For example, from the beginning I have thought that Melissa is a little meh, and I personally was not sure if her feelings are true and after seeing her coping - or should I rather say not coping - with her children, and then with her husband I was sure that my gut feeling was right again. Tom I wanted to continually slap, bang his head on the wall or shake strongly, he felt like a wet weekend and I really wasn't sure what Emma saw in him at all.The best characters I think were Rosie and Jack, and the relationship between mother and son was brilliant, a dream one actually, I guess every other would like to have such son.Like I already said, the characters were brilliantly written and developed and it was a real joy to read about them and the situations that they put themselves into or that expected them. The book is full of those and there was not a single minute that I have lost my interest. The pace is only right, it's full of twists and turns and while some of the situations were predictable, the most of them was not and I was never sure where Janey is going to take us. The chapters are being told from either Emma, or Rosie, or Winston's point of view and they alternate between them and this was the best way to write this story. A brownie point goes to the true honeymoon stories, history of honeymoon, honeymoon fact between the chapters, which I enjoyed reading immensely. Add to this beautiful descriptions of the Greek Island that took my breath away and made me yearning for a holiday in Greece and you have your perfect, summer holiday's read. Janey writes with a lot of detail and the descriptions are very exact but she does it in a very interesting, colourful and realistic way.It was a great read, written in a beautiful, subtle way, with a lot of love to details and gripping storyline. A brilliant, warm and uplifting book. There happens so much but every thread is solved and the author didn't leave me with any questions opened. I feel totally fulfilled and very content and would really recommend this read to you. There is nothing that can go wrong!Copy received from publisher in exchange for a review. less

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