Immersed in its narrative, I breezed through the book in just a few sittings, which speaks for itself.

There is then all this angst about whether she should go to the funeral and seeing Luke again, as he apparently left her 6 years ago and moved from NY to Denver. As is this author’s style, there is hilarity and heartache intertwined in this story to create something very unique. While I know they added a bit to Rachel's own story, I just didn't care enough about her clients at The Cloisters to want to read so much about them. I am up to chapter 30 something,, Rachel and Quin are having dinner with Claire and Adam and quite frankly - I am bored. If there’s a core theme in Again, Rachel, it’s that of forgiveness: forgiveness of oneself for human failings.For a woman in her late forties, she remains depressingly shallow, obsessed with designer labels, cosmetics, peoples’ looks and weight, including her own (it’s subtly implied that she’s constantly on a diet) and the state of her hair. Rachel, Luke and pretty much everyone else gave me the boke by the end - I remember absolutely loving the first one, but everyone was so hateable this time. As always, Marian manages to mix tragedy and comedy in such a way that quite often you'll find yourself smiling while the tears are still rolling down your cheeks.

Rachel is dating Quin, “an adrenaline junkie, his particular poison being rock-climbing”, but in spite of his adoration of her, she is reluctant to commit fully. Family dynamics, like those in the Walsh family from Again, Rachel , are a common focal point in literature.The same kind of heart touching awareness and pain and love, as in the first Rachel book, and at the same time, new poignant twists and turns revealing the rest of Rachel and Luke’s story. She gets news that her ex-husband Luke's mom has passed away and even though her life is settled and she has a great boyfriend, she feels the need to go and pay her respects to her former mother-in-law. I need to be careful here lest I offend anyone, but many many parents lose children, it’s devastating, but it is a fact of life. The topics discussed in this book were certainly important but the book itself was long winded and become a struggle to read at times with so many different people in and out of the addiction center. But you would be missing out on all of the background and emotional journeys these characters have gone through in the previous books.

For instance Rachel identifies a lifetime struggle with low self-esteem and feelings of unworthines as an obstacle in her life journey. I loved the bits with Rachel's patients at the Cloisters, each one of them came fully into their own right and I felt connected to their journeys - even though they were not the main focus of the story.Instead of showing that you can actually move on from a broken heart and find love with a grown-up, or be happily single, Keyes cleaves to the myth of the “one true love” and (major spoiler) has Rachel getting back together with still-hot in leather trousers (of course) Luke.

Marian Keyes is the international bestselling author of Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel's Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Sushi for Beginners, Angels, The Other Side of the Story, Anybody Out There, This Charming Man, The Brightest Star in the Sky , The Mystery of Mercy Close, The Woman Who Stole My Life, The Break and her latest Number One bestseller, Grown Ups. Where Rachel’s Holiday concluded with her estranged boyfriend, Luke Costello, declaring his love for her, here we learn that Rachel and Luke have now been acrimoniously divorced for six years, and have not spoken since. This is all then retrofitted to provide the standard romance happy ending where it was all a misunderstanding.

But it was way too long and there were too many characters - and I cared about none of them, even Rachel and her sisters. The chance to read and review Again, Rachel in a recent Tandem Global Collective read along was a big win for me. In this one, Rachel is an addiction counsellor, and Keyes had a good time writing the group counselling scenes. When I found out it was centered around Rachel and it takes place 20 years after Rachel’s Holiday, I had to pinch myself to be sure.