I got Jill Mansell’s Perfect Timing free with some magazine years ago and it remains one of my favourite uplifting books. Like Jilly Cooper, Mansell excels at capturing people, and makes implausible scenarios seem totally likely.
Take A Chance On Me is really enjoyable for about three chapters and then dips down into autopilot. Mansell makes an engaging male character (saddled with the hideous lothario name of Johnny LaVenture), makes him warm and witty and generally nice, and then makes him hop around until our heroine deigns to fall into his arms. I know this is always going to happen and it’s not rocket science, but it helps if the story along the way makes its fantasy vaguely realistic, and this may as well be actual Mamma Mia! instead, in which case God help us all.
Cleo is a 29-year-old school drop-out who still lives in the village where she was brought up. The school bullies called her Misa (“Me Sir!”) for being swotty and so she reacted by ploughing all her exams and eventually becoming a limo driver. One of these school bullies is the insanely hot LaVenture, who decides to spend the entire book grinning at Cleo, even though she’s a) failed to get over the fact he bullied her at school (a bit) b) never bothered to get those exams and c) spends the ENTIRE BOOK either being sulky or dragging him into her failed love life. The couple are given no build-up, there’s no momentum to their relationship beyond it suddenly being the last chapter and oh bollocks they really need to hurry up and get it on.
Anyway, there is another subplot involving a ghastly 18-year-old girl, a ridiculous husband and Cleo’s sister, and a further one involving Cleo’s radio star best friend and Cleo’s boyfriend’s ex-wife, but given that the only really good part of this book is the beginning, I’d say ditch it and read Perfect Timing instead which is on fire all the way through. This is just a bit meh.
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