Two couples, best friends for half a lifetime, move in together. What could possibly go wrong…?
Harriet and Mark have it all: successful careers, a lovely house in a leafy London suburb, twin boys on the cusp of leaving home. Yvette and Gary share a smaller place with their two daughters in a shabbier part of the same borough.
But when the stars align for a collective move north, it means a fresh start for them all. For Mark, it’s a chance to escape the rat race; for Harriet, a distraction from her unfulfilled dream of a late third child. Gary has decided to reboot the Madchester band that made him famous, while Yvette hopes it will give her daughters what she never had herself.
But as the reality of their new living arrangements slowly sinks in, the four friends face their own mid-life crises, and the dream becomes a nightmare…
My thoughts: do not move in with your friends, I feel like I’ve read several books that start with this premise and everything always goes horribly wrong. The only thing worse would be moving in with your in laws. I love my pals but I don’t think we’d cope with living together, not when you’re all settled in your ways and like how you do things. Which is why two middle aged couples doing just that in this book.
Harriet and Mark have two sons who’ve just graduated from uni, Jack who’s off to work in the City and Ollie, who doesn’t appear to have a plan, at least to his parents. Yvette and Gary have two daughters, one off to Oxford and one about to have a baby. All their kids are settled more or less.
The parents, on the other hand, Gary’s reforming his Madchester era band, Yvette’s lost her TA job, Harriet’s latest redevelopment (she’s an architect) is way over budget, Mark’s in a spot of bother at work and keeping it a secret. So of course they all decide to live in a converted factory together. Can you say mid-life crisis!
I was going “don’t do it!” and then of course they did. Bad idea guys. Bad idea. But very entertaining for the reader, lots of schadenfreude.
Things go wrong from there. Or at least more things than were already wrong. Yvette is easily the nicest of the four and I’m glad she was ok at the end while the others got their comeuppance in various ways. I’m glad things worked out for Ollie too. But yeah, definitely never moving in with friends. I’m going to be a recluse and live on my own on an island instead. It just feels safer.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 