Lifesaving for Beginners Readalong Week 3

This week is the third and final week of the readalong of Lifesaving for Beginner by Ciara Geraghty. I feel like a bit of a cheat sitting down to write this post today because I actually couldn't stick to the schedule because I just had to keep reading so finished the book nearly two weeks ago! Oh well. I guess it is better to be way ahead of the schedule than way behind *cough...War and Peace readalong...cough*.

Given that this post is about the final third of the book,  please be aware that there are

*****SPOILERS AHEAD*****

This final third is still about Milo and Faith, but really it is the part of the book where Kat has a big reality check. Her brother Ed collapses with a heart condition, and it is almost as though this is the spur that Kat needed to see that she had been blocking so much emotion that she has removed herself from her friends and family, from her former boyfriend Thomas, from realising the truth about herself.

Suddenly, after years of secrecy, Kat decides that she is going to come clean about that she is in fact Killian Kobain, and in doing so the power is taken away from the person who was blackmailing her. I must confess that the revelation of the identity of the blackmailer was a bit of an anticlimax for me. Bree and I had been having a discussion about who the blackmailer might be, and I was in the ball park but it is hard to get completely right when you never even knew of the existence of the person!

What the revelations about her identity do bring about is a media siege. Both Kat's own home and her parent's home is surrounded by a media scrum as they try to find out more about the huge story that has just broken. With a bit of subterfuge, Kat is able to escape and finds herself heading to England to start working on repairing starting a relationship with Faith and her family. There were a few moments in this section that almost slipped into the slapstick zone, particularly around the upcoming birth of Milo and Faiths dad's new child. It was amusing, but it kind of broke the flow for me.

I did mostly like the end, but there was one thing that I wasn't as keen on and that was the fact that Kat went on to write a novel that was called Lifesaving for Beginners. I guess that it won't bother some people, but I often find that kind of thing when an author inserts themselves into the story or does meta kind of stuff a little irritating. It was but a small blot though. The actual closing scene of the book where Thomas brings his book to be signed was the perfect way to end the book. Whilst it is clear that this is a new beginning for the two of them, it wasn't an ending where we see Kat waltzing down the aisle, or popping out her third child or anything like that. It was understated and hopeful, and really lovely!

In her discussion post this week, Bree posed a couple of questions that I thought I would address here:

What do you think Milo’s role in the story was? Do you think that without him, Kat and Faith would have been able to connect?

Milo was a fantastic character. His inquisitiveness and openness were the main facets of his personality that allowed him to enable many of the interactions between Kat and Faith. One example is when he rang Kat in the middle of the night to talk to her about Faith. Whilst initially Kat was resistant to the idea of coming to see Faith, I do think that having had that contact, Kat felt more secure when she did try to reach out. I did find it interesting that the author chose to have these scenes set at Christmas time. That can be such a trying time of year for a lot of people and so to then throw in the added complication of a birth mother on top of it being the first Christmas without a loved one added another level of emotional drama to the whole scene.

The whole lifesaving thing was quite an interesting aspect to choose as the title for the book. It is a great title. It certainly made me wonder what on earth the book could be about. Mile talked a lot about his lifesaving class but it was interesting that we never got to observe him in that environment.

Was Kat redeemed as a character? Did you like her/identify more with her at the end of the novel than you did at the beginning? Do you think she evolved in a believable way?

Kat as a character had a long journey in this book, and for the most part I think that she was redeemed. I think that she will always be who she is. I can't imagine that as a result of the events in the book that she will suddenly becomes fun and flirty and always happy, because I don't think that is truly who Kat is. But I do think that she is more open and far more honest both with herself and with the people that she loves, which has to be a good thing.

For those that enjoyed this novel, if you haven’t before, will you be reading any of Ciara Geraghty’s backlist/her future novels? Has this read-a-long introduced you to a new sort of book and a new novelist that you might wish to read more of?

This was my first Ciara Geraghty book, but most definitely won't be the last! I already have one of her other books out from the library and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for her future books. I was kept up late into the night reading this book, wanting to get to the end so that I would know what happened!

Oh, and I have to say.... if there was a branch of the Funky Banana cafe near me I would practically be living there! It sounds like such a fab place!

Rating 4/5

Thanks to the fab people at Hachette for organising the readalong and for the book, and to Bree for hosting the discussion.

Synopsis

Kat Kavanagh is not in love....

She has lots of friends, an ordinary job, and she never ever thinks of her past. This is Kat's story. None of it is true.

Milo McIntyre loves his mam, the peanut-butter and banana muffins at the Funky Banana cafe, and the lifesaving class he does after school. He never thinks about his future, until the day it changes forever. This is Milo's story. All of it true.

And there is the other story. The one with a twist of fate, which somehow brings together a boy from Brighton and a woman in Dublin, and uncovers the truth once and for all.

This is the story that's just about to begin.

Lifesaving for Beginners Readalong Week 2

Shhh... don't tell anyone but I am actually writing the start of this post on Thursday night, even though I am not going to post it until probably Tuesday. Why am I doing that you might ask. Because I really want to be able to go and pick up the book and keep reading until I am finished! I am finding the book very, very readable and very difficult to put down.

So in this week's discussion we are very much in the meat of the book so

**************Spoilers Ahoy*******************

So the book did go where I thought it was going to go when I read last week's section. While it was pretty obvious, I did enjoy the reveal and the way that Kat stayed true to character even if that means that she behaves badly in the eyes of other people. Kat takes much longer than you or I might to process her feelings and doesn't cope well with emotional ambushes -something I think we have seen time and time again through the book.

I thought Faith was incredibly brave to just turn up in Ireland at Kat's parents, and it was the first time that I felt that we got to see anything much personality wise of her parents. I did enjoy the reunion between Faith and Kat's parents.I am not sure I would have run off to Ireland the way she did, and especially not with Milo in tow, but it turned out that he really was the catalyst that made so many of the connections for Faith.

My heart broke for young Kat as we found out how the adoption came about. I can't imagine not realising that you were pregnant, although I guess if you were a completely innocent 15 year old you could deny the obvious. As for Kat's parent being unaware, I can see how that would be happen. When I had my son I took him into my workplace and the receptionist (who I saw most days) asked me if I had been on holidays at which point I held up the baby capsule to show her my bundle of joy and she hadn't even realised that I was pregnant! I do suspect though, that it wasn't so much that Kat wasn't showing much but rather that her parents were just too distracted by whatever it was that they were doing to notice.

The birth scene broke my heart. Kat's mother turned up not even knowing that her daughter was pregnant and suddenly took control. There was no discussion, no options put forward. The baby was just whisked away with Kat not even knowing if she had a daughter or a son. One thing that I found confronting was the fact that as a family, Kat and her parents never ever spoke about the baby again. In her discussion post, Bree has identified denial and doing the right thing as two of the big themes of this section of the book and if you want just one example of it, then this would be it.

The moment when Thomas finds out about Faith was interesting for me. I understand completely why his feelings were hurt about this but I also wondered if given a little bit of time to digest the news he wouldn't see that this is how Kat deals with all the biggest issues in her life. Denial, repression and yet more denial.

And how about Thomas? I must say I think he moved on way too quickly and I lost a teeny bit of respect for him when he told Kat the news that he was engaged to someone else. I am sure in the end everything will work out, but there is a bit of a journey to happen here.

I have now finished the book, but I will hold off on discussing the end of the book until next week's discussion post is up! The fact that I have already requested my next Ciara Geraghty novel from the library will possibly give you some clue as to my final reaction about the book!

Lifesaving for Beginners Readalong Part 1

Over the next couple of weeks I am participating of a readalong of Ciara Geraghty's book, Lifesaving for Beginners. The readalong was organised by Hachette AU and is being hosted by Bree from All the Books I Can Read. The fact that Bree is the host was pretty much my deciding factor as to whether I was going to join in or not (you know, bloggy friends sticking together etc etc) but so far I have to say that I have been really surprised by how much I am enjoying the book!

I am not sure what genre this is supposed to fit into. In days gone by, may have been classified as chick-lit, although I am not sure that it fits easily into that category (despite the fact that I am going to talk about it as if it does in a little while). Perhaps it is more women's fiction - whatever that means! Perhaps I should avoid trying to pigeon hole it and just get on with writing this post, and reading the book for that matter!

If, however, we are going with the chicklit label then I have to say that for some reason I really enjoy the voices of Irish writers when they write in this genre. I really like British voices too. Those two both really work for me. I have long been a fan of authors like Marian Keyes and Jill Mansell and I can definitely see myself reading more by Ciara Geraghty once I finish this book.

Right from the beginning of the book, I was engrossed in the story. It opens with a car accident involving a truck, a deer and two cars. In one car, there is Beth, the mother of 9 year old Milo, his older sister Faith and older twin brothers Adrian and Anthony. In the other car, there is Kat Kavanagh. On the surface Kat is living a normal, middle of the road kind of life, but the reality is that Kat has secrets - lots and lots and lots of secrets.

While Beth is killed, leaving her family trying to manage as best they can, Kat finds herself trying to cope after her "miracle" survival. Kat seems to not really be able to function on a day to day basis and soon it becomes clear that Milo's family have plenty of secrets of their own that are impacting on their lives daily too.

In alternate chapters we learn more about Kat and her boyfriend Thomas, her few friends, and the secret life that she has been living for many years as an uber-successful, uber-private crime writer of the Declan Darker series. I presume that in the next part of the book we are going to find out why it is that she seems so closed down emotionally, especially in relation to Thomas who has to put up with Kat's apparent disinterest in anything more than a superficial relationship.

In the other thread of narrative, we spend time with Milo as he tries to deal with the fall out from his mother's accident, the impending birth of his half sister or brother (which his dad announced at his mother's funeral - good going dad!), plus we get to see his relationship with his siblings, most especially with Faith. Faith has gone from being a big sister to having almost parental responsibility for Milo, whilst trying to maintain a relationship with her boyfriend Rob, playing in a band and studying. She is a young woman with a lot on her plate. So when she finds out that she is not precisely who she thought she was, her own world starts to become somewhat uneven as well.

I am enjoying both voices. Milo is obviously the easier of the two characters to like, but I do think I get why Kat might be so shut down emotionally. I don't however get the whole  'I am about to turn 40' disaster theme, mainly because when I turned 40 it wasn't so much that I wanted to have a meltdown, but more that I just wanted to sleep through it and wake up on the other side!

It seems obvious to me where this is going to go in terms of the link between the two main characters, beyond the initial impact of the accident. We will have to wait and see to see if I am right and if there is any subtlety in the way that this is revealed to the reader. If it does go where I think it is going to go, then it was telegraphed a fair way out.

Now, excuse me! I am off to read more of this book!