The Good Luck Girl (by Kerry Reichs)

(Amazon UK link)

I found yet another writer I had never heard of. Kerry Reichs is - or was - in fact an American lawyer. However that's not something I would have guessed from this book which I was sent for review by The Bookbag.

Checking the pink/pastel cover, 'The good luck girl' appears to be light chick-lit. And indeed, that's how it appears in the early chapters. Maeve, the narrator, is a rather flighty young woman. She spends impulsively, way beyond her budget, and gets easily distracted.

Maeve also loses track of time, and is late for her job once too often. She looks for sympathy (and food) from her parents... by the end of the first couple of chapters, I wondered if I would warm to her at all. Her only redeeming feature seems to be her great affection for Oliver, her white cockatiel.

Maeve decides to take a trip across the United States, in the hope of reaching a long-lost friend in California and finding a glamorous job. She decides to stop off and camp at towns with unlikely names, and that's how she ends up in a place called Unknown when her elderly (and much-loved) car breaks down.

Stuck in Unknown, Maeve realises she cannot be unknown in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and her past begins to unravel. She starts to look at the future as she matures and lets go of painful history.

I found myself liking her more and more as the book progressed. The writing is good - if light - and there is humour as well as some quite moving and thought-provoking sections.

Ideal for bedtime or holiday reading; more depth than you might expect, but don't expect anything gripping. I read it over about ten days, for just twenty minutes or so most evenings.

My longer review of The Good Luck Girl can be found on The Bookbag site.