I read a few books by Veronica Henry a few years ago, and liked them very much. So I added a few more to my wishlist. One of them, which I was given for Christmas 2020, is ‘The Long Weekend’. It sat on my to-be-read shelf for over two years - I’m not entirely sure why - but I finally picked it up to read a few days ago. 
(Amazon UK link)
It’s a novel set over the course of a long bank holiday weekend - with a few flashbacks into the past - but it involves rather a large cast of characters. What links them is a luxury and somewhat quirky hotel in Cornwall, called ‘The TownHouse’. It’s run by a couple called Claire and Luca; he is a superb and creative chef, she is an excellent administrator.
They only have eight rooms, of varying sizes, but they’re almost all going to be occupied over the weekend. They also expect lunch visitors, and quite a crowd at the bar, so Luca, Claire, and their receptionist Angelica are going to be busy.
Early in the book there’s a paragraph explaining who the visitors will be, as Claire consults her list and reminds herself; this was useful to me, since each section involves a different person or group, and it was quite hard, at first, to remember who was who.
There’s a wealthy couple who visit regularly, and who have a proposal to make to Luca and Claire. I’ve already forgotten their names. There’s a man called Colin, coming with a ‘friend’ and her daughter, taking up two rooms. There’s a young couple, Laura and Dan, who have booked the very smallest room, one that’s only really suitable for a single person, and there are three rooms booked by six men coming on a stag weekend. They have promised not to be rowdy or to do anything embarrassing.
Naturally, since the novel revolves around these people, there are secrets from the past, some of which unfold during the course of the story. Claire has a shock when she sees the groom from the stag night; she knew him many years earlier. Colin has managed to keep a significant part of his life a secret from his wife and family, and Laura is searching for her father, whom she has never met.
I found the stories interesting, although as the different groups of characters don’t interact with each other, the book feels more like several short stories spread out, switching from one to another to draw them out and to give a bit of tension. I thought Claire’s flashback story was probably the most interesting and developed part of the novel, but the people I liked best were Laura and Dan.
The stories are quite engaging, and I found myself turning the pages wondering what would happen. The writing has a nice pace, and the conversations mostly feel believable. There’s nothing particularly deep, but as a light holiday read, it’s a good book, albeit fairly typical chick-lit.
However. I didn’t find any of the characters fully three-dimensional. This may be because there are so many, and we only get their stories in short chapters spread through the book - so there’s nobody I could relate to. I also thought there was rather too much emphasis on physical passion; two of the stories involve times of infidelity in the past, supposedly indulged in due to the heat of the moment, impossible to resist - which doesn’t feel realistic, and made me less interested in the characters concerned.
Even less believable are two instances in the book of sudden, unplanned bedroom scenes, and one, not unplanned, but rather sordid. Thankfully there’s not too much detail in most of the encounters mentioned, and the two unplanned ones are instrumental in moving the plot along.
They’re minor gripes, but the latter one means I wouldn’t recommend this to teenage friends, or, indeed, anyone who doesn’t like reading about this kind of thing.
But if you’re looking for some light reading, and don’t mind the many people with different stories, and an ending that leaves some of the threads still rather open, it’s worth trying. Despite all the above comments, I did enjoy reading it, and often read fifty or more pages at a time, wanting to know what would happen in each of the different stories.
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