Ok – at this point I need to confess to a bit of a girl crush on Marian Keyes. I follow her on Twitter and feel like we’ve watched the last few series of Strictly Come Dancing together. Hey – she’s even TWEETED ME BACK a couple of times (dances a jig!) We also share a love of Clinique Chubby Sticks. So – with all of these mutual interests – I had high hopes for her new(ish) book ‘The Woman Who Stole My Life’ and took it away with us to read over the Christmas break.

Here is what Amazon have to say about it:

“International bestselling author Marian Keyes is back with another masterfully told story full of wit and charm.

‘Name: Stella Sweeney.

Height: average.

Recent life events: dramatic.’

One day, sitting in traffic, married Dublin mum Stella Sweeney attempts a good deed. The resulting car crash changes her life.

For she meets a man who wants her telephone number (for the insurance, it turns out). That’s okay. She doesn’t really like him much anyway (his Range Rover totally banjaxed her car).

But in this meeting is born the seed of something which will take Stella thousands of miles from her old life, turning an ordinary woman into a superstar, and, along the way, wrenching her whole family apart.

Is this all because of one ill-advised act of goodwill? Was meeting Mr Range Rover destiny or karma? Should she be grateful or hopping mad?

For the first time real, honest-to-goodness happiness is just within her reach. But is Stella Sweeney, Dublin housewife, ready to grasp it?

Marian’s stunning new novel The Woman Who Stole My Life is about losing the life you had and finding a better one.”

I have to say that I really enjoyed it.  There were some total laugh out loud moments (so I was ‘LOLing’ on my sunlounger in both senses of the word!!) but it is also really moving.  I thought the title was going to be predictable in the story line – which it was – and wasn’t!  It combined many different story lines woven together that if you set out as individual facts would look odd – but it all flowed brilliantly.  The fact that Stella is a slightly chubby, 40 something Mum also rang true (although not lots of the other stuff, before my husband gets concerned!!)  Also, having been to New York fairly recently – I enjoyed the bits set there.

It is not a deep, complicated read – but it is fun, easy, and you always want to keep reading to see how it’s going to develop.

Now – I must go and download some of Ms Keyes’s back catalogue…..