The blurb promises us a funny heartwarming story about the main characters quest to find a husband.What we really get is the depressing tale of a womans life. ( )

Amazing what all transpired in this lovely fluffy book. It was like watching someone juggle. The perfect beach read, even if it was raining every day. ( )

A light and entertaining read but not as good as the 2 other Laurie Graham novels I've read - At Sea and The Future Homemakers of America. It relies rather too heavily on stereotypical characters although that is a deliberate part of the humour of the book. ( )

This isn't my usual choice of book, but as I was given it I decided to give it a go. I did really enjoy it actually, and once I got into it I found myself wanting to read more to find out what happened next in Poppy's life. I did find at times I did not like Poppy very much and she was quite a selfish person, but I don't think I enjoyed the book any less! It does whizz through her life though. ( )

This book was nothing like what I was expecting. The blurb on the back led me to believe it was going to be a book set in WWI, what I got instead was a book covering years and years of Poppy Minkels life.

Here are some of the things I didn't like about the book;

- You never really get to go into much detail on her life, because it's always moving so fast, just a quick, this happened and it was like this, and then this happened, and then before you know it another 10 years have passed. I guess I just don't like that kind of writing, I prefer good portions of narrative, along with the descriptive text, and you really didn't get that in this book. It was just little snippets of things that happened to her in her life.

- The main character and narrator, Poppy Minkel, I found to be an impossible character to like. She started out a naive 15-year-old, which considering she was a child you can forgive, but she remained naive until she was in her 20s, and then moved swiftly from naive to selfish, and often downright cruel.

- For a book that covers so many years and moves so fast between them, the book felt slow.

Overall I don't know if I just didn't get along with the reminiscent narrative, or if it was the main character I didn't like, or if it was how the book tried to cover too much time and too many events in too few pages, or if it was all of this. I just really didn't like this book. ( )