Rachel's Holiday: British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022 (Walsh Family)

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I was not really a grownup, I was newly a mother, and not in a great way, so that bright pink cover shining through the plastic wrapping was a beacon of light. But I found myself inexorably drawn into her story. I couldn't put the book down. I was seriously absorbed. I HAD to find out how she was going to resolve her life. I HAD to know if she was going to come out of denial, if she was going to realize what a stupid beeyatch she was....I really needed there to be resolution for this story. Saying goodbye to fun and freedom will be hard - and losing the man who might just be the love of her life will be even harder. Keyes always writes a happy ending, “because you can’t depend on real life to do it for you”. After her father died of Alzheimer’s in 2018 she “mainlined” Mills & Boon novels. And she doesn’t think upbeat conclusions are “entirely unrealistic”; it’s just a question of timing. “In every life we have ups and downs, times of awfulness and hopelessness and then things sort of come together for a while. I always like to finish at the good bits.” I don’t know if you’ve ever read the sequel of a book you’ve loved, and very often the sequel just doesn’t give you the same happy feels of the first book,” she said. “When that happens to me, I not only dislike the sequel, I then start to side-eye the original book and think, was it really that good in the first place? You know there’s a lot to be damaged here, but I’m going into it and I’m enjoying it, and it’s really lovely to connect to all the Walsh family.”

Again, Rachel, the sequel to her ground-breaking novel Rachel’s Holiday, will be Marian’s fifteenth novel. a b c "BBC One - imagine..., 2022, Marian Keyes: My (not so) Perfect Life". BBC . Retrieved 8 February 2022. She’ll pay a couple of months ’ rent to Brigit so that Brigit has breathing space to find someone new.’ Okay. You probably don't trust me. I've been throwing 4 and 5 stars around like it's Christmas. But I feel it's like Christmas, because I've suddenly been opened to a whole new genre that's not UF or PNR, and suddenly, everything is new and fresh and wonderful. I loved the bits with Rachel's patients at the Cloisters, each one of them came fully into their own right and I felt connected to their journeys - even though they were not the main focus of the story.The best way I can describe first reading Rachel's Holiday was that it felt like coming home. I felt that Marian truly understood women, their feelings, emotions, struggles, concerns and complex- ities. She is an exceptionally gifted writer who somehow makes her skilled storytelling appear effortless.

Set after the events of Rachel’s Holiday, one of Keyes’ most well-known novels, Again, Rachel allows us to access both the enigmatic Rachel Walsh and her charismatic family. I totally forgot how mad and unique this clan was but I didn’t take long for me to get myself reacquainted with this fun-loving family. Keyes includes some great characterisation and this is carried through for the length of the novel. Rachel was how I remembered her and I liked how her character was extended further in this latest Keyes release. The Walsh family were endearing and it was good to reconnect with this family circle. While some relationship elements weren’t exactly to my tastes or expectations, it was good to be involved. With a number of heavy topics (and possible triggers) surrounding addiction, alcohol abuse and loss, readers need to be open to this if they select Again, Rachel. It is told with Keyes’ original blend of tragedy and comedy. Of course I had no intention of going anywhere but by then I was really frightened. And not just by the talk of going home to Ireland and into a clinic, but because my father had rung me. He had rung me. That had never happened in the whole of my twenty-seven years. It was hard enough to get him to say hello whenever I rang home and it was one of the rare occasions when he answered the phone. The most he ever managed was ‘Which one of you is that? Oh Rachel? Hold on till I get your mother.’ Then there was nothing except banging and bashing as he dropped the phone and ran to get Mum.In 2019 the National Library of Ireland announced that the Keyes digital archive for her novel The Mystery of Mercy Close would be acquired by the Library as a pilot project for collecting " born digital" archives. [12]