Me and Mr Jones by Lucy Diamond

  Engaging, Entertaining, Amusing

Chicklit/Contemporary/Romantic/Family Drama

Me and Mr Jones by Lucy Diamond

What was to become of Mulberry House? Lillian and Eddie felt that they had served their time, quite literally, and it was time to retire and downsize. But the question of what to do with their family home and business was very much an issue. Should they sell up or were any of their offspring up for the challenge of keeping it running....three very different men, currently living their own very different lives in very different circumstances.

Hugh, the eldest, is very much settled with wife Alicia and three young children. Together since university, they now lived in a large house in Lyme Regis. Both enjoyed responsible and respectable jobs. They were the very definition of domestic contentment. Alicia, however is on the cusp of a milestone birthday and feeling that changes are required to ring in her new decade, starts with her image. Nothing could have prepared her though, for quite the amount of unsettling change that was about to occur. A haircut was the least of her problems...

David and Emma were living the high life in Bristol, or at least they had been until recently. Emma, an interior designer is currently the main bread winner since David had been made redundant from the architectural career he had so loved, and it had become abundantly clear that her husband was not good at being idle. Quite frankly, she was growing increasingly concerned for the state of his mental health. Meanwhile, all she could think about was getting pregnant.

Charlie, the youngest of the Jones' boys was single and currently working (whenever the fancy took him it seemed) at a local garden centre. He had had relationships, all of them short lived. His latest fixation was firmly centered on his niece Matilda's ballet teacher. Commitment had never been one of Charlie's strong suits. Thankfully, persistence was.

Izzy had moved from Manchester to Lyme Regis with her two young girls. She had been assured of a flat and a teaching job, albeit temporary and was relieved at the prospect of a fresh start. Since childhood, she had convinced herself that wherever she went, trouble found her, and this unfortunately was still the case. She will do anything to protect her girls, even if it means putting herself in harms way. .......

I don't even have to read the synopsis to confirm that I am going to enjoy a novel from Lucy Diamond, it's a dead cert. She has been my Literary comfort blanket for as long as I can remember. Her books take me through the full range of emotions, and 'Me and Mr Jones' was no exception. The strongest of these was humour. Large parts of the book were 'cryingly' funny for me, but this would depend on your sense of humour; David puts him and Emma, who thinks she's coming for a dirty weekend, in charge of running Mulberry House whilst his parents are away. Emma has an encounter with an elderly, uppercrust gentleman guest.... who unfortunately is on the toilet at the time with his trousers around his ankles. The fact that it also comes complete with sound effects, albeit written which, incidentally took nothing away from its level of hilarity, meant that it took me quite a while to compose myself before I could contue reading......Alicia, preparing for her solo trip abroad and buying her rather scanty, scandalous underwear......Charlie's pursuit of Matilda's ballet teacher, and Emma's drunken outburst, leaving Lillian in no doubt of her short-comings as a mother-in-law.

There were also a number of more solemn scenarios to, such as Emma and David's marriage struggles, Alicia when she fears that her life may not be as in order as she'd thought and Izzy's utter determination to keep her little family safe.

If you are a fan of family drama, stories with strong female leads with some gritty twists and wonderfully unexpected wit, then you will want to give this and other books from Lucy a read.