When Nick Young invites his girlfriend on a trip to Singapore she frets about meeting his parents. She has no idea that her quiet, humble boyfriend has more money than the World Bank and that she’s about to enter the treacherous, back-biting world of Chinese high society.
I wasn’t expecting a sequel to Waiting Exhale. Apparently neither was Terry McMillan. “All four of them got on my last nerve long after their shelf life,” she admits in the Author’s Note. Getting To Happy is a billboard sign advising middle-aged females to take the next slip road off the love quest But 15 years after Bernadine, Savannah, Gloria and Robin finally exhaled around that camp-fire, they’re back. Alas, the years have not been kind to them. Their money’s funny, work is unsatisfying and love has made a fool of them all. If Helena Andrews’ Bitch is the New Black suggested black love was tricky in your 20s, Getting To Happy is a billboard sign advising middle-aged females to take the next slip road off the love quest as they’re likely to have more success hunting down the Holy Grail. The book isn’t a difficult read. McMillan’s energetic, stream-of-consciousness translates into pages that practically turn themselves. But there’s a bitter edge that permeates too much of the novel. If somebody founded an anti-romance movement …
I settled down to read this novel on a three-hour train journey from Marrakech to Casablanca. As a huge fan of fluffy, romantic novels I’d been hoarding it like a birthday party bag since discovering it in a London bookshop. After a few miles of unremarkable Moroccan farmland it seemed like the ideal time to dive in. So, the disappointment was that much keener when it turned out to be…not particularly good. Maya, a thirty-year-old Bengali Brit has proposed to her best friend Jhanghir. With a penchant for the dramatic, Maya hasn’t just pulled him aside one day and confessed her undying love, she’s flown across the Atlantic (he lives in New York), derailed his engagement to a family friend and proposed to him on stage at an awards ceremony in front of family and friends. It’s hard to root for a relationship based more on desperation than emotion. Wow, she must really love him, you assume. Hmmm, not so much it turns out as Maya’s overriding concern is not love but her fear of …
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