Book Review and GIVEAWAY: Good Eggs, by Rebecca Hardiman {ends 3/28}

Guest review by: Becki Bayley

“If I were you, Mrs. Jameson,” Millie continues now, “the first thing I’d do is check my handbag.”

Mrs. Jameson levels a watery, disconcerting gaze at, or sort of at, Millie.

“Not to alarm you—Kevin, my son, you see, now he’s an alarmist. He worries about his knees, he’s an athlete, you see. Wonderful tennis player. Very graceful. And then, oh Gerard’s exams! That’s his eldest. Will he fail? Will he meet a nice girl?”

Millie throws up exasperated hands to punctuate her monologue. She decides, having studied the woman’s soft folds of skin and collapsed neck and hand-stitched eyelet cover, that back when Mrs. Jameson was not bedridden, before whatever befell her, she was a generous woman with a creative streak and a wicked sense of fun, a good egg.

Three generations of the Irish Gogarty’s are having a bit of a rough time. It was an amusing distraction to read of how they face the problems that they think are shaking the world, while not even usually noticing what their other close family members are going through.

Official synopsis:

When Kevin Gogarty’s irrepressible eighty-three-year-old mother, Millie, is caught shoplifting yet again, he has no choice but to hire a caretaker to keep an eye on her. Kevin, recently unemployed, is already at his wits’ end tending to a full house while his wife travels to exotic locales for work, leaving him solo with his sulky, misbehaved teenaged daughter, Aideen, whose troubles escalate when she befriends the campus rebel at her new boarding school.

Into the Gogarty fray steps Sylvia, Millie’s upbeat home aide, who appears at first to be their saving grace—until she catapults the Gogarty clan into their greatest crisis yet.

With charm, humor, and pathos to spare, Good Eggs is a delightful study in self-determination; the notion that it’s never too late to start living; and the unique redemption that family, despite its maddening flaws, can offer.

This was definitely an engaging multi-generational story. While most books marketed with three generations feature all women, this story highlighted the matriarch Millie, her son Kevin, and Kevin’s daughter (Millie’s granddaughter) Aideen. The three stories were mostly pretty independent of each other, until the last third of the story when Millie and Aideen joined forces to escape some troubles and confront others.

While the beginning of the book was a lot of set-up, the interaction of the whole family, and the adventures of Millie and Aideen really made the ending more fun. Millie was a quirky, eccentric old lady, but learning more about her story as the book went on was heartwarming. Kevin was unemployed with too much time on his hands, but recognized the value of his family eventually. Aideen appeared on the surface to just be a troubled teen, but she also had her own hidden charms.

Overall, I’d give this book 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it as a pleasant contemporary fiction. Some of the language and explanations that were unique to Irish culture added to the enjoyment.

{click here to purchase}

Becki Bayley worries that a real job may be cutting into her reading time. This was kind of expected. Read her other reviews at her own blog, SweetlyBSquared.com.

GIVEAWAY:

Two of my lucky readers will win a copy of Good Eggs!

Enter via the widget below. Giveaway will end on Sunday, March 28th, at 11:59pm EST, and winners will be emailed the next day and must respond within 24 hours, or an alternate winner(s) will be chosen.

Open to both U.S. and Canadian residents!

Good luck!

Good Eggs, by Rebecca Hardiman