I absolutely loved her first novel "The Angel in the House" but was not blown away by this one.

Connie and Matt have been together since their teenage years. Whilst on vacation in Rome, Matt bumps into the love of his life, Greta, the girl who left him as a 17 yr old. Can Connie get him back to her (the one who stayed) and to their family of 3 sons? ( )

If I summarized the plot you would probably laugh...but this is not meant to be primarily a funny book. It's just that O'Riordan has put together a rather weak and unbelievable story. However, the reason I found it be be actually an OK book is that the core characters: the mother, her three sons and the father, all struck a resonance with me. The experience of feeling that you love your children, and then not long after feeling that you can't stand living with them any more, was well described by O'Riordan and caused me some considerable reflection on my own family situation. The emotions felt by the wife-mother at the prospect of her husband's possible affair with an old mutual friend seemed realistically complicated to me. ...but maybe I'm just a simpleton. I won't, however, be adding Kate O'Riordan to my list of authors to be followed up. ( )