We All Live Here
JoJo Moyes
440 pages
Published February 11, 2025
Penguin
🌳🌳🌳
We All Live Here is the latest offering from the author of the bestselling Me Before You trilogy, and is a mix of family drama and rom-com set in suburban England, about Lila, a 40-something divorcee, and her agreeably dysfunctional family and friends. I don’t read a lot of this kind of thing, but have been in the mood for gentler stories lately, and this sounded like nice easy escapism. I did like it, but it is quite slow and very predictable, without the emotional punch of her earlier books.
After being left by her husband for a younger woman, Lila lives with her two daughters, prim stepfather and needy dog, getting by on the profits of a book she wrote about keeping your marriage together. Then her real father, who abandoned her mother when she was a child, shows up needing somewhere to stay, her publisher is hounding her for another book, and her ex announces he’s having another child with his mistress. So when a hot single father starts chatting her up at the school gate, it seems her luck is turning – but life is rarely that simple…
I liked the minor characters here more than the heroine, who’s a bit feeble and self-centered. Lila’s daughters were at least entertaining, as was genial charmer Gene. It took quite a long time for anything to happen, and it was fairly obvious what was going to happen with the romance angle. I liked the feelgood ending but will have forgotten the plot of this by next week – far from her best. 3.5 stars rounded down for the present tense.
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