Angels - Marian Keyes > Reviews (5)

Maggie has always seemed like the most irritating of the five Walsh sisters - or so she has been painted by her sisters Claire and Rachel in the respective novels "Watermelon" and "Rachel's Holiday" that Marian Keyes has penned about them. Sensible, solid, dependable - all in a really annoying way - oh, and a "lickarse".

So I wasn't ultimately too happy to discover there was going to be a book all about her. I thought it would probably be pretty boring, even if it WAS set in the City of Angels, LA. However, it turned out there was more to Maggie than meets the eye!

At the beginning of "Angels", Maggie discovers that her supposedly perfect marriage to the equally dependable Gav is on the rocks as he admits he's been having an affair. In addition, her job is on the line . . . so rather than face up to anything, she uncharacteristically decides to escape indefinitely. She flies out to LA to stay with her struggling writer friend Emily, and this is where the fun really begins.

Maggie gets to see a whole new world in LA, and a whole new side to herself too . . . as we all do. Having only ever witnessed Maggie through her sisters' eyes before, it is actually very interesting to see what she is really like. They thought her life was perfect but they literally had no idea what was going on behind closed doors. Maggie is not the person they thought she was. In fact, she's not even the person SHE thought she was.

One makeover, a silly crush, and a brief dalliance with lesbianism later and Maggie is starting to feel a bit better. But there are still matters in her past that need to be resolved . . . such as all of the little things that lead up to her marriage breakdown. There is definitely more to that than meets the eye, and throughout the novel we begin to find out exactly what happened in the run-up to her escape to Los Angeles.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Marian Keyes has such a good knack of finding the humour in a bad situation, and producing fantastic characters that seem so real that they practically jump off the page - and "Angels" is no exception to this rule. Like I said, I wasn't really keen on the idea of a full book about Maggie but it turns out she was a very complex character and actually very easy to relate to. She came across in the other Walsh sister novels as perfect but in reality she is probably more flawed and complicated than the rest of them put together!

As well as Maggie's personal struggles, there was an interesting subplot in the form of Emily's struggle to sell a script. This was intriguing because it showed the Hollywood angle from a business point of view, and you get to see just how complicated the life of a writer in LA can be.

It's always nice when Marian returns her attention to the Walsh family and they are a fabulous comic creation, particularly Maggie's insane parents, and her spoilt princess sister Helen - and we get to catch up with them all in this novel. Always a pleasure! (By the way, Marian, you've now covered four of the Walsh sisters - where's the book about Helen, eh?)

This was a great read and if you are a fan of Marian Keyes at all and haven't already tried this book, you definitely should. It is undoubtedly one of her best!

***""Angels" costs £5.39 from amazon.co.uk - it is, however, available used from amazon marketplace from 1p***