Marian Keyes is such a great character-writer. Every person in this book is beautifully written and I was rooting for Rachel all the way through. Wonderfully funny and heartbreakingly sad in equal measures.

Thank you, Michael Joseph Penguin Publishing, for sending this book in exchange for an honest review.  

We first met Rachel in the second book in this series which is called Rachel’s holiday, this is her journey with addiction when she was twenty-years old. Twenty-five years later, we are back with Rachel, she has love, her family, a great job at the place where she went for rehab, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers. But with the sudden reappearance of Luke, the man she loved twenty-five years ago, her life wobbles. She’d thought she was settled and fixed forever. Does she about discover that no matter what age she is, everything can change? Is it time to think again, Rachel? 

Before I fully get into this review, please make sure to check trigger warnings on this book due to the heavy context that is discussed and will be discussed within this review. I liked Rachel’s personal growth in the first book and how she seemed to get over the addiction. During this book, I loved her growth, and I liked seeing the reality of addiction. I liked how she went back to the Closters for work after that place helped her so much. I liked the storyline, the only thing that was a weakness is the love triangle. I just wanted Rachel and Crunchie to garden and buy all the shoes and enjoy herself. Instead the last part of the book was just Rachel deciding should she go back to safe with Quin or back to the thing of the past with Luke. I just think that both Luke and Quin were massive pain in the ass and I believe Rachel was better on her own.  

I can’t wait to read the first book in the series as I skipped that one and read the second one first and I can’t wait to hear the adventures of the other Walsh siblings. 

I can't help but love Marian's books even when the themes take a darker turn, and while Again, Rachel definitely has it sadder moments, as always we're left with a feeling that things will be all right, that the characters have weathered the storms and come out the other side.

This book is both a comforting return and an unpredictable new novel! I thought it was fantastic and read it in a day, staying up til 2 30 to finish. Ironically, highly addictive.

I loved this book SO MUCH. Rachel’s Holiday was the first Marian Keyes book I ever read (so many years ago now!) and I loved it so much that I then read everything else she had out at the time, and I’ve read every book of hers since then. I have to admit, I’m always a little skeptical about sequels that come so long after the first book, but this one was amazing!

At the start of this book, Rachel is seeing a man named Quin, whom she met at a meditation retreat a couple years ago. But when her ex-husband’s mother dies and he comes to town for her funeral, she realizes this is the opportunity to get some much-needed closure with him so she can fully move on with her life. With each encounter between them, the reasons their marriage dissolved six years ago becomes clearer and clearer, and things turn out not to be as she thought. The emotional journey that Rachel goes through is so poignant—heartbreaking and healing and wonderful all at once and I loved it so, SO much. (For anyone who absolutely needs to know who she ends up with at the end,

it’s Luke!

❤️)

This is a slow-paced read that I really enjoyed sinking into. Rachel is an addiction counselor at the Cloisters, where she rehabbed twenty years ago. Her own battle with addiction helps her identify with her patients. We learn a lot about their struggles and their paths to recovery. I really loved all the side characters and I was rooting for their success along with Rachel. Writing amazingly lovable side characters is something Keyes really excels at and I really enjoyed that aspect of this book.

This was such an emotional read and it deals with a lot of really heavy topics, but it never felt like too much. Though I feel like Keyes’s more recent books don’t have quite as much humor as her earlier ones, this one still has her brilliant, witty voice, and I laughed out loud several times. The writing style of this one felt very in line with her previous book, Grown Ups, than with Rachel’s Holiday (though I could be wrong about that; it’s been a very long time since I’ve read Rachel’s Holiday!), and I really enjoyed it.

I loved revisiting the world of the Walsh family, but I think anyone can enjoy this book without having read that series. I loved the family dynamics and Rachel’s different relationships with all her family members was amusing and felt so true to life. 

Overall, this was an amazing book—definitely one of the best I’ve read in a long, long while, and one that will stick with me for a long time. For anyone who enjoys Marian Keyes, this is an absolute must-read, and for anyone who loves an emotional, character-driven story that slowly unfolds, this is definitely one to pick up!

CW: addiction,

grief, divorce, loss of a child, miscarriage, sexual abuse, infidelity

Big thanks to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!