Review: My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes

Bjørn reviews My Favourite Mistake, the seventh book in Marian Keyes‘ romantic comedy series, the Walsh Family.

About the Book
Series:Walsh Family #7
Genre:cosy mystery, romantic comedy, genre fiction
Publisher:Penguin Random House
Date of Publishing:11 April, 2024
Trigger Warnings:cancer
Page count:604
Book Blurb
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes

Anna has just lost her taste for the big apple . . .

Anna has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner. And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn’t want all that? Anna—it turns out.

Turning a minor mid-life crisis into a major life event she packs it in, heads back to Ireland, and gets a PR job for a super-high-end coastal retreat.

Tougher than it sounds. Newsflash: the locals hate it. So much so, there have been threats—and violence.

Anna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There’s no ugliness she hasn’t seen. No wrinkle she can’t smooth over. Anna’s got this.

Until she discovers that leaving New York doesn’t mean escaping her mistakes.

Once upon a time she’d had a best friend. Once upon a time she’d loved a man. Now she has neither. And now she has to face them.

We all make mistakes.

But when do we stop making the same one over and over again?

Song of the Book

Too Many People by Pet Shop Boys

Review

Following the sequel to Rachel’s Holiday, my favourite book ever by my second favourite author, was always going to be hard. I only found out that My Favourite Mistake was coming out at all from the newsletter Marian sent on the RELEASE DAY and oh boy oh boy. I decided to buy it the next day, in case of… uh… well, of course I immediately bought it.

I genuinely had no clue this was going to be a Walsh family book. Seeing a heroine named Anna made me wonder why Marian (since we’re best friends, although she doesn’t know that, referring to her as ‘Keyes’ or ‘the author’ just feels weird) would pick a name she used six times before. IT WAS ANNA WALSH THOUGH!!!! Instant happiness, just add 600+ pages.

The book itself, though. Hmmm. Rachel and Luke have been, uh, reduced to boinking. Mama Walsh sounds like she lost her “sometimes I used to say something nice” genes. Margaret only exists as an angelic landlady. Claire gets some attention (coincidentally, she should also get a second book) and Helen is as Helen as Helen gets. So, that’s the Walshes taken care of. For the non-fans, none of those sentences was a compliment. It almost felt as if Marian Keyes got a ghostwriter and didn’t bother revising the result. And all this after an incredible book about The Boinking Couple who, which you wouldn’t guess from My Favourite Mistake, have personalities.

What the Walshes don’t lack is the following: children, spouses, spouses’ children from previous marriages, nephews, cousins, in-laws… For someone with my Walsh Family experience this is immensely enjoyable, but I have to admit even I kept getting lost among the many, many family members of various genders, ages, and relations. The acknowledgements state this book would work as a standalone – I disagree, unless it comes with a wiki, Song of Ice and Fire style.

Then there’s the actual plot. A couple with a daughter who has particularly invasive cancer, are trying to build a resort for the one-percenters-but-nice. Someone is sabotaging it. Who? We, through Anna, get to meet a lot of people who live in the village. A lot. With names. Some of those characters are Flatland-flat – 600+ pages already, remember. One is hot-and-dangerous-mysterious-hopefully-a-good-lay. One is an instant best friend (I want my own Courtney!) And then there is the love interest…

In Again, Rachel I didn’t know until the end whether they-will-or-they-won’t. In My Favourite Mistake (I STILL don’t know what the title refers to) it’s will-they-FINALLY. It was the one disappointing part of the book – the obviousness. What I did love, and command Marian for, is the exact same thing she has first done in Rachel’s Holiday and then Again, Rachel – obviously we assume the heroine is the Good One, and the person who mistreated her is the Bad One, until… oops… there is a little slip here or there… and it turns out that it’s Anna who’s blocked on social media by the Bad One… even though Anna is the Good One… what could the reason be? This part was exciting and enjoyable – watching the character getting more fleshed out than I expected she’d be. Unfortunately, this came at cost of all the many others.

The hardcover is a 600-page brick. I think the problem is that it should have been more of an 800-page one. There is simply so much happening, so many people, of course the entire Walsh family, the whole village, the people building the resort, I just got tired. In fact, I have no quote of the book, because nothing stayed in my memory.

BUT!!! This is not a bad book! The sabotage plot is really satisfying. This part is Agatha Christie-worthy, and that is quite some praise from me. Yes, the realisation that half or more of the Walsh family was my least favourite part shocked me somewhat. I simply have different expectations for Queen Marian Keyes than I would for some lesser author like, dunno, James Joyce or whoever else bothers writing books. So this is not a 3,5/5 book, it’s a 3,5/5 Marian Keyes book. James Joyce wishes.
I do NOT recommend reading it as a standalone, unless you’ve got incredible memory or at least a notebook next to you to write down who brought whom where why when for what reason. In fact… as a superfan, I don’t recommend it to anyone but completists. It’s better than The Grown-Ups, but the bar is low, because I tried The Grown-Ups twice and DNFed twice, because I couldn’t get myself to care about any of the characters. In My Favourite Mistake it felt like I cared more than the author did.

Our Judgement
Might Require Their Services - 3.5 Crowns

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