Published: 2016
Author: Carol Wyer
A fun, fluffy, forgettable read
There’s a danger in knowing a little bit about a subject portrayed in a book you’re reading. Disbelief becomes hard to suspend and every mistake feels like a personal insult. If the book is one that you’re fairly neutral about in the first place it leads to frustration and an inability to focus on the story. That unfortunately happened to me with Carol Wyer’s The Woman Who Lost Her Mojo
Charlie is approaching 40 and her life is in a rut. She is divorced, suffering the after effects of bereavement and dedicating her life to charity work but forgetting to live herself. One drunken Hogmanay she agrees to a ‘bucket list’ swap with her disabled best friend. For one year she has to carry out all of her friend’s wish list including zip wiring, going on a terrifying roller coaster and swimming with sharks. As the year goes on Charlie finds her life changing forever.
This is fairly light-hearted wish fulfilment stuff. Nothing exceptional, but a decent and fun read. I was never in love with the book, but I was enjoying it well enough as a pleasant but probably forgettable way to pass a couple of days. I did have some issues with the amount of dialogue in the story – it might sound a strange criticism but it felt like the entire narrative was explained in ridiculously long speeches rather than in the action portrayed.
There were plenty of laughs in The Woman Who Lost Her Mojo, particularly provided by Bert the adorable parrot and Charlie’s horror at some of her challenges was fun to read. There were also little bits of really touching emotional moments – Charlie’s bereavement and pain is palpable throughout the book and her relationship with best friend Mercedes is especially nicely done.
It all went wrong for me though with the depiction of a scuba diving lesson. I know, I KNOW I shouldn’t take it all too seriously and that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing but I went from trying to convince myself that a wee bit of artistic license wasn’t a bad thing to being furious at some of the practices depicted. If the story reflects any lesson that Carol Wyer experienced then someone needs sacking. I accept fully though that this is my issue and someone who has no knowledge of how a diving lesson works wouldn’t give a damn about the fact you NEVER remove your regulator while doing an emergency ascent.
Taking aside though the injury to my professional pride, this was an enjoyable story with some laughs, a bit of romance, some intrigue and a huge dollop of cheering for a likeable and realistic heroine. It won’t feature on my top ten books of the year, but it was pleasant company for a few days.