Rowena’s review of To the Moon and Back by Jill Mansell.
Hero: Zack McLaren
Heroine: Ellie Kendall
Jill Mansell is one of the biggest authors of women’s fiction in the UK with a growing audience in the U.S. Her appeal lies in her poignant, funny, romantic love stories with secondary characters from different generations that draw a huge female audience from 16 to 60, and the kind of plot twists and complications that make every book a pageturner. Newly widowed Ellie moves to London’s glamorous Primrose Hill to start over, and life is looking up. But her new boss, Zack McLaren, is terribly distracting as he does everything he can to win her attention and her affection.
Jill Mansell did another wonderful job of sucking me into the lives of the characters she created. In To the Moon and Back, we meet Ellie as she goes from living the life of a happily married woman to putting her life back together again as she loses the husband she loved so much.
Mansell always does a wonderful job of making me connect with her characters and that wasn’t any different with this book. I’ve dealt with the death of a loved one and I saw my thoughts and reactions mirrored with Ellie’s thoughts and reactions in this book. The denial and the grief, followed by the need to blame someone (even when there really isn’t anyone to blame) took me back to a few months ago when I was going through the same thing with the death of my Mother. There isn’t anything that could bring them back but that doesn’t stop you from wanting it and it doesn’t stop you from having conversations with that person even though they’re gone.
Ellie was a well rounded character that I related to and connected with on so many levels. She definitely made this book just that much more enjoyable and I’m glad that I picked this book up for review because it showed that it may take time but you’ll move on. You won’t want to and you won’t lose sight of the people you lost but you will pick up the pieces of your life and move on.
As with all of Jill Mansell’s books, her secondary characters stand out. They’re all so wonderfully three-dimensional and I absolutely loved them all. From Roo and Todd to Tony and his love interest (dang, I forgot her name)- they all made this story just that much enjoyable and I really enjoyed getting to know the whole lot of them. It’s never hard to fall into a Jill Mansell book and while I haven’t loved every single one of her books, I did love this one.
Kudos to Jill Mansell on another wonderfully written story that had me tearing up, smiling and laughing more times than I can count. It’s an enjoyable read and I so recommend it to fans of chick lit, women’s fiction, romance and British characters. This is a good one.
Grade: 4.5 out of 5.
This book is available from Sourcebooks. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
Leave a Reply