Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes

Lucy Sullivan is getting married...or is she?

Lucy doesn't even have a boyfriend (to be honest, Lucy isn't that lucky in love). But Mrs Nolan has read her tarot cards and predicted that Lucy will be walking up the aisle within the year.

Lucy's flatmates are appalled at the news. If Lucy leaves it could disrupt their lovely lifestyle of eating takeaways, drinking too much wine, bringing men home and never hoovering. But Lucy reassures them that she's far too busy arguing with her mother and taking care of her irresponsible father to even think about getting married.

And there's the small matter of no boyfriend. But then Lucy meets Gus, gorgeous, unreliable Gus, and she starts to wonder - could he be the future Mr Lucy Sullivan? Or could it be Chuck, the handsome American? Or Daniel, the world's biggest flirt? Or even cute Jed, the new boy at work?

Will Lucy find her soulmate? Read this book if you want to laugh, cry and do no work for a week.

Have you ever read a book where you sat there reading, and thinking, oh my goodness, this is the story of my life, or I know someone who is EXACTLY like that? In some ways, this was one of those books for me!

Lucy and her friends decide that it would be a bit of a lark to go and get their fortunes read and for her to say that Lucy will be married within 18 months just made everyone laugh, because after all, Lucy can't keep any man for very long! However, as the things that the fortune teller said start to come true for the other girls, Lucy begins to believe that maybe, just maybe, it might be true for her as well. The only bloke that Lucy has managed to keep hold of for any length of time is Daniel, and they are just friends. All her friends think he is gorgeous but Lucy just can't see it for herself.

And then Lucy meets Gus - queue the soft-focus, long-lensed camera shot of a couple running in a field full of flowers. Gus, is...well, Gus is just perfect. He's good looking, funny, sexy, her friends love him (well, except maybe for Daniel)and Lucy very quickly finds herself involved in a relationship with him. Only problem is Gus is also unemployed, always broke, always drunk, always unreliable and probably unfaithful. Oh well - nobody's perfect right?

This book is one of Marian Keyes' earliest books, and you can definitely see her trademark style of dealing with complex and difficult topics whilst still being laugh out loud funny. In this case the issues range from being the child of an alcoholic, about always choosing men that are bad for you and about settling for something less than you deserve.

I guess in a way I could relate to Lucy- I am a child of an alcoholic and have a difficult at best relationship with my mother, but to be honest the character that rang so many bells for me was Gus. So Gus is a talkative, funny, short Irishman, whereas my ex was a tall, Afro-Caribbean bloke, but the brokeness, the unreliability, the lies, the cheating......they were ALL there! I found myself willing Lucy to dump him long before she actually realised herself what a jerk he was! Difference being that Lucy got her HEA whereas I have basically given up on anything like that for me!

Once again Keyes delivers up a book that tugs at the heart strings but is also laugh out loud funny. If there were any weaknesses with this book, it was that some of the characters were very caricature like - there was an Aussie who was living and working in London who was completely cliched. The other thing was that the ending felt very rushed and a bit contrived. At over 700 pages long, the fact that the ending was so rushed is probably a problem. Oh, and the other one was that there are people mentioned in the epilogue who literally were in the book for just a couple of pages. Apart from those two or three little niggles, this was once again a very entertaining read from Marian Keyes!

Rating 4/5