Rowena’s review of Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Jill Mansell.

Dexter Yates loves his fun, care-free London life; he has money, looks and girlfriends galore. But everything changes overnight when his sister dies, leaving him in charge of her eight-month-old daughter Delphi. How is he ever going to cope?

Comic-strip artist Molly Hayes lives in the beautiful Cotswold village of Briarwood. When it comes to relationships, she has a history of choosing all the wrong men. Leaving the city behind, Dex moves to Briarwood – a much better place to work on his parenting skills – and he and Molly become neighbours. There’s an undeniable connection between them. But if Dexter’s going to adapt, he first has a lot to learn about Molly, about other people’s secrets…and about himself.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Jill Mansell book and after reading this one, I’m thinking that I need to pick up more books by her.  This book hit all the right spots with me and I really enjoyed it.

So this book is about Dexter Yates who is living the bachelor life and has no plans to leave it behind…not now anyway but that all changes when his sister dies, leaving him the sole guardian of his niece Delphi.  Having his life change overnight is something that Dexter isn’t prepared for and seeing him struggle with doing the right thing was really what made me come to love Dexter.  All of the internal struggles that he was dealing with, on top of his grief over losing his sister, I connected with all of that.

As with all Mansell books, there was a lot more than just the whole Dexter thing going on in this book.  We met Molly, Dexter’s neighbor and the people in her life and a lot of other people in the small town that Dexter moved to, to raise Delphi.  Getting to know the other people around was fun.  So much happens in Briarwood, who would have thought?

So much happens in this book and I’ll admit that a whole lot of what went down surprised me.  I didn’t see  a lot of what came out happening but they did and holy crap was it good stuff.  So much drama.  The whole thing with Frankie blew me away.  I was not expecting that to happen but it did and a lot of other things unraveled because of that one thing but in the end, man it was a great book.

Now, I will say that there were times when I wanted to punch Molly a good one for the assumptions, the holding off and then the almost letting Dex get away bit but eventually she gets it right so I wasn’t too mad about it.  The thing about Jill Mansell characters are they are so imperfect and they all revel in their imperfections.  And those imperfections make really great stories, as was the case with this one.

I definitely recommend this book.

Grade: 4 out of 5

This book is available from Sourcebooks Landmark. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.