Customer Reviews

Lessons in Heartbreak

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I found this story to be an interesting read once I got over the way in which the author seemed to be bouncing around in the past and present. However, this is really a good example of women's fiction in that the plot centered around a group of related women's whose lives were at the crossroads and their reaction to the health of the matriarch of the group was reflected in their actions and their reactions to each other's story. The sense of mystery of each's secrets was well played and if you can get through the choppy way inwhich the story unfolds it is well worth the journey

I can't say that I could identified with Izzy but her aunt's story was heartbreaking and one I could indentify with. Because the story was generational there is stor line for every reader. Though the author lives in Ireland and the story takes place if Ireland as its anchor for me it didn't read at all like any of the characters were really Irish, which was a disappointment for me.

This book won't appeal to everyone but if you like long drawn out stories which are interwoven through the lives of women then you might enjoy this book. For me if fell far short of my expectations.

This book is so trite it's ridiculous. I have a hard time getting into a book that claims size 10 is plus sized, and that the sized 10 woman is carefree about her eating habits. Yeah, right. I doubt I will finish this book as it's a colossal waste of my time. Do not bother with this book, read Jane Green or Jennifer Weiner instead for much better chick lit.

This novel starts out as pure chick-lit, with the obsession over the male love interest, but she is so shallow and Joe is so clearly a deceiving liar we don't like either of the characters.

Jodi the outsider Australian who has moved into the quaint little village of Tamarin (which kept reminding me of a monkey) was more interesting to me than the main character Izzie. Her life is not perfect, but she gets on with it without bitterness or angst.

Annaliese and her husband splitting was totally dull, with the only spark of interest in that story line her life literally being saved by Mac. But the men in this book are all like cardboard, flat and lifeless. If Joe has any real feelings for her in the book, he sure never convinces us.

The only high point of the book is the Lily thread, and her relationship with Jamie, also a married man, like Joe. They tell the same lies to get their women into bed, only Jamie dies, and she meets her husband Robby and presumably learns not only to love, but allow herself to be loved in return.

Joe is just an awful character, and the whole 40 and pining for a child issue has been done better elsewhere. As for a book of Irish interest, nothing, totally flat. They mention Waterford a few times and the town reminds me of Dungarvan, not far from the great big house Lismore Castle, but there is hardly any visual description of the country at all.

So for the Lily story, 3 stars, the rest was neither romance, nor literary fiction. The whole marketing of this story as an Irish girl's tale was also completely misleading. For those looking for real modern romance set in Ireland, try Sorcha MacMurrough or Evelyn Trimborn, for historical romance, Shannon Farrell.

Otherwise, anyone looking for happiness or love in this novel is going to be heart-broken. This was a depressing book in the end, defying or rather jumping genres and not ever getting it quite right.

The book description had inspired my interest, because I love how Irish novels often include particular beauty in the use of language - and even homelier examples can include wry wit and warmth. I was rather disappointed here, because the dialogue and situations are definitely of the 'chick lit' genre, which is not my taste.

The character of Izzie undoubtedly was intended to be multi-dimensional, but I found her more to be a compilation of standard 'types' - even clichéd. The story is interesting enough for a train ride or afternoon at the shore, but it did not have the depth I had assumed from the book description. For example, from the outset Izzie is clearly supposed to be one who 'goes her own way' (even eating as she pleases, despite being a supposedly 'heavy' US size ten at five foot nine...), but the various aspects of her character, and that of others, did not combine in a satisfying whole.

I'm sure the book would appeal to fans of the chick lit genre, but I found it all rather tiresome.

This is a hard book to give a star review for. I enjoyed the story but I had two very large problems with it which I'll get to later. I ended up with two stars - four for entertainment value and one for the problems described below.

This is basic chick lit with a theme of adultery. The idea, I think, is to see adultery from a couple of different points of view but I'm not sure the author was really up to the task. Although some of the characters are fleshed out, many are incredibly two dimensional. Much of the novel takes place in Ireland but don't expect much Irish here, Tamriel could just as easily be in California, New York, or anywhere else. I'm not saying that's bad but if you're wanting the quaint Irish sense of a Maeve Binchy book, you're going to be disappointed. The author also jumps around in time not only from chapter to chapter but from sentence to sentence so it can be hard to keep track of where everyone is at any given time (you're reading about the end of Izzie's relationship with Joe almost before it starts). That sounds mostly negative, I think, but overall, if you can get past the choppy timelines, and the pretty big complaints I have (which may not bother you) the book is an enjoyable read.

There are three main storylines with a few little subplots thrown in. The first story line is Izzie and her relationship with the married Joe. Izzie is a pretty flat character. She's the typical really gorgeous heroine chick lit authors love. She meets Joe and inexplicably falls "in love" with him. I say inexplicably because nowhere in the book is his personality described except by his actions toward her and his wife (which are dispicable) nor are Izzie's reasons for loving him ever explained. They have really, really great sex though.

The second storyline is Lily, Izzie's ninety year old grandmother (though we only meet her at this age in one scene) and Jamie, Lily's girlhood love who had the bad luck to marry someone who is afraid of sex. Lily and Jamie meet at a friend's wedding, they dance together, and the deal's done. Neither of them thinks about anything else until their second meeting at which they almost make love on a kitchen table. At their third meeting they declare their devotion to each other and Lily, the Irish small town girl gives up her virginity to Jamie with relish while the bombs of World War II send people fleeing underground (ok, so the book lacks a certain sense of reality but disbelief should be suspended for romance novels). Again, although there are elements to Lily that could have enticed Jamie to fall in love with her, he professes his love before he knows any of them. Like Joe, there is no description of Jamie's personality anywhere in the book so we've, frankly, no idea why Lily is in love with him except that, again, the sex is really, really good.

The third main story is where the author does the other point of view and introduces us to Annaliese and Edward. Annaliese is shocked to come home from church early to find that her beloved husband of 20 years and best friend, Nell, have been having an affair and her husband is leaving her. Since these people are "old" (at least as compared to the beautiful 20 and 30 somethings in the two other relationships described), the author is forced to skip the explicit sex scenes (who wants to read about wrinkly people having sex?) and come up with scenes which describe people interacting with real emotion. Only Annaliese and Edward are shown this dignity and it means you know why they loved each other. Since this part is told from Annaliese's point of view, you don't know much about why Edward fell for Nell but that's not necessary here. I found it pretty sad that Annaliese comes to the conclusion that the end of her marriage is all her fault. You'd be hard pressed to convince me that when someone turns their back on their marriage vows that anyone but them can be accused of ruining the marriage. I'm certainly willing to concede that there are extenuating circumstances but it's clear that Edward never once told Annaliese that he was unhappy and, as far as I'm concerned, that means HE ruined the marriage when he walked away from it instead of trying to confront it.

Now I recognize that I'm pretty negative and snarky here and that is because of my two big problems with this book. One is that the author very strongly mistakes lust for love. There is no actual loving behavior described between the two younger couples - just hot sex. Physical attraction is great but it is NOT love and the two can be mutually exclusive. Joe is a horrible character who treats both Izzie and his wife with contempt so although he SAYS he loves Izzie, we see no evidence of that until he decides to leave his wife if Izzie will have him (note the "if" there - he'll stay with his unloved wife if Izzie won't let him move straight from his wife's arms to hers). The professions of love here, and in the storyline with Lily and Jamie both lack any real emotion and that makes me sad. If these people are breaking their marriage vows, wouldn't it be nice to have it be about more than sex?

The second problem is pretty tied into the first and that is that this book is pretty apologetic about affairs. Both Lily and Izzie express regret about sleeping with married men but all they do is express it. In both cases, they decide that their love for their married lover supercedes any moral requirement. Both men express absolutely no regret - their marriages are for show so they don't have any reason to be faithful to their wives. I had hoped that Annaliese's story would offset this but her realization that "I think I ruined my marriage" (and her daughter's heartbreaking "No wonder Dad left you.") basically put paid to that and, again, excuse the extramarital affair. Believe it or not, I'm not a prude but I would have liked to have seen SOMETHING that implied that a marriage should be respected.

Overall, as I said, this is certainly an engaging novel. It goes a little slowly at times but is mostly entertaining. If the problems I describe with my own conceptions of the novel would not bother you, then I see no reason why you would not enjoy it reasonably well.

This book features solid writing but the story lines of three generations of Irish women seems tired and trite and the past/present focus gets a bit off putting. I had to put this book down several times and pick it back up and force myself to finish it.
I really liked the story of Lily, the matronly grandmother, with a past that she hid from her family of being in love with a married man of a different socioeconomic class than her who captured her heart but conflicted with her religion. Lily was a solid hard working nurse who met him through a friend and against her better sensibilities has a affair with him.
She learns the meaning of love after meeting her husband and learns to let go of her lover.

Izzie Silver drew me in with her love of her grandmother Lily and her hectic high paced life in New York as a booking agent at a modeling agency who ultimately decides to open her own agency featuring plus sized models. She meets Joe, a married man, at a fancy dinner and commences on an affair thinking he is living separately from his wife and sons and is only in his marriage for the sake of the children.

When family tragedy strikes and Izzie returns home because Lily has had a stroke she finds out her aunt Anneliese has had her world torn apart by her husband having an affair with her best friend and leaving her. Izzie feels torn and guilty and returns to New York to break off her affair.

This book felt heavy at times and read as realistic from the women's point of view of the events happening to them but I felt the male characters were never fleshed out to understand why the women went to the lengths to keep them or dump them and move on with their lives.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters are ones that you can truly related to. The unrequited love, which we all have experienced at one time or another. This book will keep your attention, and you won't want to put it down until you have finished it.

First of all, I have never read a Kathy Kelly book before, so I don't have a pre-existing yen for her work. Also, I do not like "romance" novels. So, I may have picked the wrong book for my taste, but I wanted to give it a try based on the description. The main problem that I have with the book & characters is that I don't get a feeling that they are real or believable. There are several instances where I just felt that these characters were not quite stereotypes, but flat and route. As the book went on I found myself thinking,"Ugh, I have another 200 pages to go." I admire Kelly's interest in elevating the story by intertwining multiple women in different generations, but their trials and tribulations just didn't connect with me. Publisher's Weekly is quoted as saying, "Cathy Kelly knows exactly what women want." Which could actually be a negative as it may sound as if she has been there, done that and knows what literary buttons to push and cliches to use to score with women. But for me I need more than just what people think us women want to read.

Lessons in Heartbreak left me undecided about how I felt about the storyline. Without giving away all of the plot the story revolves around three women from Ireland, The main character is young and lives in NYC, one middle aged and still in Ireland find her marriage is destroyed by an affair, and the last is the main character's grandmother who is in a coma and we learn about her life in the 1940's. While part of the story makes you want more, other parts leave you feeling that need to know more. If you want an easy read and like Irish tales then give it a try.

Lessons in Heartbreak is chick lit trying to be family saga/historical fiction/ social commentary all tied up in one uneven package. It is the story of three women from one family and their struggles with heartbreak. The overriding theme through it all is adultery from three different perspectives. We learn the stories of Izzie a thoroughly modern woman working in NYC and struggling to understand how she became entangled in a love affair with a married man; Anneleise a woman coming to terms with the end of her marriage after her husband leaves her for her best friend and Lily, Izzie's ninety year old grandmother who falls ill still harboring her own secret of an affair during World War II.

The tales of these three women is told in alternating voices and the jumping back and forth in narration can be jarring at times, just as you are deeply involved in one story you are thrust back to another. Although the characters of the women are delved into in good detail most of the men are rather stereotypical and one dimensional. By far the most interesting story in the entire book is Lily's, as it touches on a lot of the class distinctions of England and Ireland that kept many people in servant class, unable to break free of their place in life because of the family they were born into. Lily's refusal to be cast in that mold made for the most engaging story. Izzie was interesting only when she was in the work place, almost everything about her involving her love affair was cliché and predictable. The character of Anneleise was irritating at best and although she was presented as a counter balance - providing the voice of the woman left as opposed to the other woman, in the final analysis she took all the blame for the failure of her marriage, relieving the straying husband of all culpability; I think it would have been a more interesting story if she was shown as a really strong woman instead of the annoying character she was.

This book is marketed as a story of an Irish girl, but there is almost none of that feel to the book, it could have been set anywhere at all there is no Irish atmosphere present, although many portions of the book set there. One other small annoyance was the constant use of the word darling, if I read it once I read it a couple of dozen times.

Although I found some of the narrative engrossing overall the book was just okay, garnering three stars because of Lily's story, which is what kept me turning the pages.