Anne-Marie Casey (1)Rezensionen

This book was a solid read about another overloaded woman finding balance.

I related quite a bit to Liddy in that I also often put too much on my plate, and I took some pleasure in seeing how she dealt with everything as it came, but I didn't enjoy seeing it all fall apart as it inevitably would. And while in most chick flick books this would be funny--cringeworthy, but funny--I found myself just cringing.

I didn't really like Liddy. I wanted to and I could see the aspects where I was supposed to sympathise with her. However, I found myself not really caring, and thus when she decided to chase her family history I found myself flipping pages just to get to the end.

Sebastian ended up being my favourite character--a competing divorce lawyer, he provides some comic relief and kept me on my toes. I generally don't like to adore the male figure, but he was fantastic and elicited a lot of angry emotions from me.

On the other hand, I found myself getting really annoyed with the way the kids in the book were treated--I felt like they deserved more than they received, especially Cal, the younger one.

I probably won't ever reread this one, but it nonetheless kept me occupied.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book, and I am sorry to see that it apparently did not reach a large audience. I found it witty and engaging. I'm afraid the title did not help its popularity as it is rather misleading and gives no hint what the book about.½

After the first dozen pages or so, I Was completely prepared to dislike Liddy and move on to a "nicer" book. But, I didn't have another one at hand, so I kept reading I'm so glad I did.

The last line of the book is my favorite, but this story of realistic people, or maybe people that are just a touch to good to believe, was wonderful Peter and his ex wife were friends who took care of and loved the son they had made together, and Peter's current partner loved that boy, too. There are more children, more men, more women, and Storm might be my second favorite. First? Well, I ended the book a huge fan of Liddy James. It too the magic of a magical place to help her find her real self, and the journey she took to get there is well worth reading.½

Chick-Fic isn’t for everyone but sometimes it’s so well-written that reading it is a sheer delight: Anne-Marie Casey writes like Marian Keyes, but better - full of Irish charm and wit but acutely observant and aware of social issues.

Liddy James, born but not raised in Ireland, is a successful New York divorce lawyer with an ex-husband, two children, a full-time nanny, and a very dangerous addiction – work.

She is in her 40s when her inevitable breakdown occurs – very publicly, on prime-time television – and she takes her spoilt sons to spend summer in a near-hovel in rural Ireland. It is there she finds her roots, her priorities, and love. This is chick-fic, after all.

The Real Liddy James by Anne-Marie Casey deals with the question faced by many - the balance between family and career. I find the book's either-or answer to the question undermines the choices and compromises so many people make in real life to manage that balance. The marketing for the book describes it as “fun, fearless, and full of heart;” unfortunately, I find it to be none of those. How disappointing.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2016/09/the-real-liddy-james.html.

Reviewed for the Penguin First to Read program

This was just an Ok read for me. The writing style was good, interesting, and paced well. The author grabbed my attention and I felt connected to the story and the characters. I felt emotional at times about these fictional people and in a way that I know the writing is good. BUT the story itself, was just OK. I may have felt connected to the characters but I didn't really like most of them. They were cliche and sometimes downright odd. Not odd in supposed to be quirky but odd in "why are they written this way? It's unrealistic and complicated".

Overall, an Ok read but I really did not like the story. I did like the writing, and the cover is great :-)

This was a review copy from NetGalley and the publisher.

A british woman's husband tells her he has lost their fortune in the economy and the family must move to New York City so he can take a much lower paying job. The story follows the lives of the people she meets at her sons school and her neighbors. I found it a but confusing at times to keep the characters straight.

A british woman's husband tells her he has lost their fortune in the economy and the family must move to New York City so he can take a much lower paying job. The story follows the lives of the people she meets at her sons school and her neighbors. I found it a but confusing at times to keep the characters straight.

I have been unable to get into this book. Find I sit down and read a few pages and then walk away for long periods of time. At page 70 the book has just started to give the back story to a second character, much less explore the relationships between the characters. Setting it down one last time.

NO ONE COULD HAVE GUESSED THE WEATHER had its good points and bad. I loved the story of the four women and the friendships they formed while they juggled the responsibilities of work, home, children, and the difficulties those duties encompassed. While Lucy struggles at first with the down-sizing of every aspect of her life, she is the one who is the strongest character. Julia, who is stressed out to the point of leaving home and family, works hard at figuring out how to make her life less demanding. Christy is a trophy wife to a much older man and has everything, but yet is not really happy with her marriage. Her husband uses his money to control her. Christy was definitely the weakest character. Robyn just works at getting by day by day, and becomes stronger with time. The link among these women is the commonality of their situations; the problems they face individually are the same.
There was a lot of time spent developing the characters, which I normally love. However, Casey didn’t get into the plot until half way through the book. I kept waiting for the four women to connect and it just didn’t happen soon enough for me. I love reading and rarely find a book I don’t like, but I struggled to finish this one. I give this one three stars.
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I received this book from Library Thing Early Reviewers in exchange for an honest review.

Yummy and not-so yummy mummies who meet at the primary school gates in NYC. The linking character between the four women is an Englishwoman now living in New York. Good quality chick-lit.½

I didn't much like these women enough to get involved with them. The plot had possibilities but didn't deliver. sorry

No One Could Have Guessed the Weather
by
Anne-Marie Casey

My very own "in a nutshell" summary...

Four women with a rather fragile connection live out their not so happy lives in NYC.

My thoughts after reading this book...

I am on a roll with novels that take place in NYC! I truly enjoy them. This one is a story of women friends...each with heart aches or dysfunctions or adjustments within their lives that have to be made. It starts with Lucy...abruptly transported to NYC. We then meet Julia...who seems to have abandoned her old life. We meet Christy...married to an older wealthy man. And last we meet Robynne...sort of totally confused.

What I loved about this book...

I am not sure I loved this book but I did enjoy parts of it. Some of it was just too awkward for me...sort of out of my comfort zone.

What I did not love...

I really didn't love any of these women at all. They were all sort of unlikeable.

Final thoughts...

I wanted this to be a yummy book about women with a strong bond living their connected lives out in NYC. That's not exactly what I got. I didn't feel strongly about these characters and while parts of the book were absorbing...for me...something memorable just was not there.

I found "No One Could Have Guessed the Weather" incredibly hard to follow at first. This book tells the story of three women living in New York City who meet and become friends because their children go to the same school. They have similar backgrounds but are in different places in their lives now. The story is put together very loosely and I needed to practically draw a family tree to see how everyone was connected. There are too many characters thrown in without any sort of background - like when you meet someone for the first time and they start talking about their friend "Joe" without giving any context to how Joe is.

If I didn't have to give a review for LTER program, there is no way I would have finished this book.

Bit of a late review as my computer died (don't worry it was sudden and I do not believe it suffered much).

I found “No One Could Have Guessed the Weather” by Anne Marie Casey to be not my type of book. It tells a story of the lives of several “New York” women as seen through their eyes. Of course, they are all different from each other in personality, tastes and their status (socially). The story seems rather typical (read it or seen it (movie/tv) before and the characters a bit snobby/elitist.

Though I did finish the book, if I didn’t have to review it I would have set it down fairly quickly.½

This disappointing read was disjointed, meandering and vague. The main characters were very tenuously connected and elicited no sympathy from me. Although the language and sentence structure was done very well, the book just failed to draw me in.

This the story of a group of women coming together at a particular time in New York City, and captures some highlights of city living, along with the kind of relationship issues women deal with as they start, raise, and leave families.

Near the end, one character is taking a writing class, and provides some insight into how this work came together, I think. "If she wrote some stories about events in her life or the lives of women like and unlike her, it might turn into something. A book that she would buy at the airport, or waiting for a train, or read exhausted in bed, in the twenty minutes her body gave her before she sank into comatose sleep. . . .She noted down words to describe her feelings about New York . . .She cut out pictures from magazines and took photographs . . .She thought about sentences and how they might work together. . . . After three months, she gathered all her notes into one document, but before she could start she needed a title."

I read this in short doses, interspersed with other books; it would be easier to follow in one go--read on a plane or at the beach, for example.

Book Review & Giveaway: The book cover drew me to No One Could Have Guessed the Weather by Anne-Marie Casey (UK title = An Englishwoman in New York). It piqued my curiosity and I had to find out more. When I read the publisher’s brief description, it resonated with me so I knew I had to read it. Other reviewers are comparing it favorably to The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which I haven’t read.

What I can say about No One Could Have Guessed the Weather is that it’s quite a timely piece of women’s fiction. Read the rest of my review & enter to win at copy at http://popcornreads.com/?p=6117. Part of the Midsummer's Eve Giveaway Hop.

I asked myself what was it that made me request this book as I read the first few pages. And then “Everything changed because Courtney from upstairs turned thirty-nine and got a dog” and I was hooked.

More or less, the classic following women who’s stories cross throughout the book, but by the end you will think “it might be true, but it doesn’t feel real”

I had a little trouble at first keeping up with who’s who but it was all worth it for the ending.

Good premise and promise, but ultimately not something I would recommend.
The author, Anne-Marie Casey writes very well and quite engagingly, but the 'story' has very little to tell, and most of the characters never became 'real' to me. I would have liked to love this book!

I thought the author wrote some really beautiful sentences but I just couldn't get into this book. I really had to push myself to finish the book. Normally, I will quit a book I dislike after 50 pages, but I kept going because A) the author really does write a nicely crafted sentence and B) I made a promise to write this review. I think I just didn't care enough about the characters. And these are my people too -- 40-something women who I normally love to read about! I believe a more-developed plot would've helped keep my interest from wandering.½

NO ONE COULD HAVE GUESSED THE WEATHER had its good points and bad. I loved the story of the four women and the friendships they formed while they juggled the responsibilities of work, home, children, and the difficulties those duties encompassed. While Lucy struggles at first with the down-sizing of every aspect of her life, she is the one who is the strongest character. Julia, who is stressed out to the point of leaving home and family, works hard at figuring out how to make her life less demanding. Christy is a trophy wife to a much older man and has everything, but yet is not really happy with her marriage. Her husband uses his money to control her. Christy was definitely the weakest character. Robyn just works at getting by day by day, and becomes stronger with time. The link among these women is the commonality of their situations; the problems they face individually are the same.
There was a lot of time spent developing the characters, which I normally love. However, Casey didn’t get into the plot until half way through the book. I kept waiting for the four women to connect and it just didn’t happen soon enough for me. I love reading and rarely find a book I don’t like, but I struggled to finish this one.

This novel had a lot of potential, but unfortunately, it just didn’t live up to it. The chapters are really short stories that are somewhat linked together, but the result is a disjointed collection. The novel might have been better with less narrative and more dialogue. I never felt that I got to know the three main female characters at all, let alone the men in their lives. I could not relate – or even like – any of them. The character development was shallow, or maybe the characters were just shallow, and that is what the author wanted to portray, in which case, she did a fine job. Without much of a plot or well-defined characters, there is not much left to say about the book. Although tags by others about this novel said things like “smart, funny, brilliant, clever, and savvy,” I just couldn’t see it.

I do not feel like the cover description told the same story as the inside of the book. I could not tell if all the characters were English at times. Each character had the same voice in my head. I liked the book at the end. The set up of the characters left a little to be desired. The introduction of new people felt fragmented at times.

From the cover, I felt like I was gong to laugh and cry with these women. I did not really laugh at any part of the book. I felt like I was going to identify with at least a couple characters. I did not feel like I was part of the group.

I did begin to like the book close to the end. I might read another story from this author. I will hope that the future stories will be set in England or somewhere other than New York.

Thank you for allowing me to be an Early Reviewer of this book.

This book is a cliche. Or rather, a whole host of cliches. The poor super rich women are bored with their lives and don't know how to adapt when the market tanks and they have to live "normal" lives. They don't feel fulfilled and have affairs or their husbands have affairs or they gossip about the affairs that are happening. I couldn't relate to any of the characters, ever. Also, the author kept using the British terms for things (i.e. jumper instead of sweater), even though the setting was NYC. This annoyed me more than it should have. It also took me a few chapters to understand how the characters related because each chapter jumped without any continuity.