After the Party: The page-turning sequel to Ralph’s Party from the bestselling author

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Although this is a sequel, don't be put off if you haven't read Ralph's Party, as After the Party can easily be read on its own. It is a beautiful mirror, pockmarked and musty and still holding the scent of the distempered walls of whichever lost French palace it was rescued from. However, I didn't particularly like Jem and only marginally liked Ralph, and while their story is one I might be sympathetic to if it were happening to my friends, the fact that I didn't like the characters made me less than sympathetic. They share the children and Jem's career blossoms as well as her health and a fling with a younger man. Jem begins to feel quietly disgruntled with everything that Ralph does and Ralph is feeling more and more like he's not even part of his own family.

Lisa is a number one New York Times and Sunday Times author who has sold over ten million books worldwide and been published in over twenty-five languages. He’s never confessed his unwillingness to have a second child, and she’s filled with unspoken resentment at his lack of support. capable interweaving of older events into the contemporary narrative recording the ebbing of intimacy.In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. This sequel revisits familiar, beloved characters and catches up with their lives since the book ended. of course, as such, the aura of mystery and anticipation surrounding its arrival unfortunately built-up the potential majesty of said-prize. I couldn't wait to read After the Party and learn more about these two and I eagerly awaited the release date.

Like a lot of contemporary women's fiction, there is a lot of dialogue in this novel, but Lisa Jewell has obviously spent a lot of time getting to know her characters as every word feels authentic and realistic. Slowly they realise that their ideal family life that they viewed all those years ago through rose tinted glasses is nothing like their present reality.the funky bunch - ralph is a commitment-phobic father (he's sold on jem, the kid's, not so much), smith is a reiki-spiritualistic weirdo, rosey is a faux-christian rocker with cheap jewelry, lulu is exactly how you'd picture someone named lulu, karl is a cheap sideplot, the kids are tragic casualties in a plot device gone horribly astray, joel is a creepy-addict-stalker, lucas is a hot 24-year-old with some mild stalker habits learned from watching his crack addicted father. The way Jewell describes the jobs and work that this entails and how it absorbs a woman's focus is very accurate without being a drag for the child free. After Ralph disappears to a studio where he paints a collection portraying Jem’s past year, he summarizes their relationship by saying: “We are about us.

If this book appeals to you, you may also enjoy the light-hearted The Rise And Fall Of A Domestic Diva by Sarah May or for an exceptional contemporary read try Anybody Out There? She sighs again, feeling the weight of things she needs to do now that she has the children for the next few days: baths to run, stories to read, clean clothes to sort out. As a wife and mother myself I really felt for Jem and found myself nodding along with her thoughts - although not her actions!I like the idea that she's gone back to her first book, Ralph's Party and imagined what became of the characters, which considering this is supposed to be 'Chick Fic' (or is it 'Lit'? The story is started with the current situation that Jem finds herself in and slowly introduces the past year and the story unfolds as the reader gets further into the book. Ralph wants to live a single life without the family intruding until he doesn’t after his Damascene conversion in the States. Ralph, a successful painter, is struggling to come up with new, hopefully groundbreaking, work for his upcoming show. Unfortunately, there's not much of a "happily ever after" to be found, and although the conclusion is positive, the rest of the tale bogs down with mundane real-life and stale relationship details.

Of course, anyone who read and enjoyed Ralph's Party will be reading this book as a priority, regardless of how I report back, but I would advise those who haven't yet tried Lisa Jewell to either go back to the beginning with Ralph's Party or pick up Vince and Joy, which is a gloriously joyful book.

This book was rather different to the ones I'd read before; which wasn't a problem at all and I enjoyed it. I think I found it a struggle because I was comparing how I live my life with my husband to Jem and Ralph, and I found the story infuriating in so many ways! Her novels have sold over 10 million copies internationally, and her work has also been translated into twenty-nine languages. SUMMARY: Jem Catterick and Ralph McLeary fell in love eleven years ago after Ralph finally convinced her his love was real. Having been a Lisa Jewell fan for over ten years I was really excited to receive this sequel to her first novel Ralph's Party.