Rating: WORTHY!
I'm not one for romance novels, but this one appealed to me because of the whimsy of a fantasy coming true. I didn't even know it was set in Britain, which was a bonus to me, but which I think was a mistake to omit from the blurb. This book is written by a Brit author, and non-British readers are likely to find themselves rather lost in the lingo (and not lost in the lino as I initially typed! LOL!).
Rachel Gosling is forty and a dreaded 'spinster' - but here, spinster can mean two things - the other meaning being one who spins stories. The fantasy husband she makes up one day at the hair-dressers and elaborates upon that night when out for drinks with some acquaintances, becomes disturbingly real when she arrives home later, and finds her fantasy husband in residence. He's everything she desired, and she panics. After realizing he's not some burglar or home-invader, she decides her best friend Sheila is having her on, but Sheila denies all knowledge of Darren.
She orders the guy out of the house and then goes to bed, only to wake up the next morning, naked and lying next to naked Darren, her wished-up husband! By lunch time, she's accepted him completely and whole-heartedly bought into her own fiction. Or has she? With her whole heart? Darren has memories of their life before her wish: real memories of courting and proposing and marrying. Those are memories which Rachel doesn't share.
As this 'marriage' continues, Rachel starts to fully appreciate the relevance of admonition: "Be careful what you wish for." Clearly her wish needed to have been defined to a much finer degree than she'd ever thought it did. To be fair, though, when she made it, she didn't realize it was going to come true. Now it seems that she's stuck with it. Or is she? Can she wish it away as readily as she wished it to be? Or is something else going on here?
There are some choice comments by the author in the voice of her main character, such as this one: "I didn’t want to be the one who enabled her to open the brown cardboard box of iniquity" which struck me as hilarious, but maybe you had to be there. On the other hand, there were multiple screw-ups in the text, which would have turned me off this novel had it not been so entertaining. Examples of these are: "pair of dogs on heat" which seems to me that it ought to read in heat, but maybe they do say that in Britain. Worse examples were:
"/like déjà vu" the slash mark appears to need erasure, and the period at the end of the previous word removing
"terra firmer" should obviously be 'terra firma', although I liked the other version
"begge the receptionist" should be 'begged the receptionist'
"I maybe claiming" which should be 'may be claiming'
"two feather boars" should be 'two feather boas
"I wouldn’t need to think about." should be 'I wouldn't need to think', or 'I wouldn't need to think about it'.
"selotape" should be 'Selotape' - it's a trademark.
"The conservation was turning into the beginning of a scientific essay" should have been 'conversation'
"my brain had been effected" should be 'my brain had been affected'
The author is also a bit repetitive using "chef’s hats on toothpicks" both in chapter 8 and in chapter 17, although this is a minor issue.
Overall, though, I loved the way this went and especially the way it ended. It was an entertaining story and kept me interested and provided a satisfying read. I recommend it.
