This was another library haul book; I’d previously read Claudia Caroll’s novel ‘Personally I Blame My Fairy Godmother’, which was funny from what I can remember of it, so I decided to give this novel a go. I know many people turn their nose up at women’s fiction, or “chick lit”, but I’ll say the same thing to them that I ranted about in uni when my snobby English lecturers sneered. There is a reason genre fiction sells! Sometimes, all you need is a novel where you don’t have to think much when you read it. You can just switch off. Plus when it comes to genre fiction, generally you know what to expect when you pick it up.
Bearing this in mind, ‘A Very Accidental Love Story’ did exactly what it said on the tin. It was a nice romance to switch off to, and it was quite predictable as to what was going to happen. This didn’t make it a stand out novel, because it didn’t really subvert any expectations I had from it, but you can’t fault it’s honesty for being what it said it was. I liked the story, and it was quite sweet to see Eloise’s character develop throughout the novel.
The only thing that was grating was the sheer number of typos – which just distract you from the story. It would be the typical missing off a letter which changed the tense of the word, or a missing connective altogether. You did know what Caroll was trying to say, but it was a little distracting all the same. The only other thing that you could really criticise this novel for was its predictability, but when it is a novel from this genre the predictability is partly why you even picked it up in the first place. What I did really like about it was that Eloise didn’t set out to find romance – she was trying to do what was best for her daughter. It was only towards the middle to latter half of the novel when the romance started to trickle in, which made it more endearing as it wasn’t in your face all the time. Yes, we did know it was going to happen – the title being a huge giveaway – but it didn’t feel like Eloise’s life revolved around that particular plot point which was nice.
One thing Caroll gets right consistently is the tone of voice in her characters. Mainly with Eloise, but her characterisation is brilliant with all the characters we meet. The language she uses really adds to the comedic effect of her writing, but this came across better through Eloise’s perspective. The only other thing that annoyed me was Lily’s dialogue – it came across as if Caroll was trying too hard to impress on readers how young her character was. The added ‘w’s to words were more annoying that anything, and it felt like Caroll was trying to dress down adult sentences with them rather than write what a 3 year old would actually talk like.
The story was really sweet, though I do wonder at the possibility of Jake’s character being so nice and clean cut as he was with the past he had. I can’t help but wonder if he would have been a bit more morally askew with this troubled background. Overall it was an enjoyable story, even if a little predictable. I would give it a 3/5 because it did its job, but didn’t really push itself to be a better novel. As I said before though, with this genre this is what you’d expect to find from a novel like this.
Advertisements Share this:
