Books 2014 - The Longest Holiday by Paige Toon

[byslantedlight]

'Don't wait for the storm to pass; learn to dance in the rain...' Laura has been married to the man of her dreams for seven months. But a week before the wedding, Matthew made a terrible mistake. Escaping the humiliation that is now her marriage, Laura is whisked off to Florida's Key West by her best friend Marty. A carefree holiday full of cocktails and fun, surrounded by gorgeous, tanned men, is exactly what the doctor ordered. Distractions comes in the form of sexy Cuban scuba diver Leo. Laura's instant attraction to him knocks her flying, and she falls hard. As the end of the holiday approaches, Laura doesn't want to go home. Is it time to face the music? Or is there more to Key West than a holiday romance?

Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, that was a quick read! *g* I picked this one from the bookshelves because it was set in Key West, which I visited for a few weeks when I was travelling in the US years ago, and really liked. I was looking forward to long languorous sunsets, bougainvillea hanging off the walls, and fruit smoothies for breakfast. The author concentrated on completely other things about Key West, though! Roosters ranging freely (don't remember those at all), the swimming pool at the hotel (we didn't have one), learning to scuba dive (we did go snorkelling, but I think they took us to a dead reef, the sods, cos there was no colour there at all...) and Hemingway's House (didn't go there either, though we did go to his bar... *g*). So I didn't quite feel like I was in Key West, although it was nice enough to be on holiday with the girls to start with.

Then they went home, except for Laura, and the book settled into it's story more than anything else. It's not quite the fluffy story that the blurb makes out (that's not the first time I've said that, is it), and in fact there's almost a kind of darkness to it. Laura's husband did something awful, which had long-term effects on their marriage - he had sex with another girl on his stag night, and she ended up pregnant. So I started out with all the sympathy I could, for Laura. Then it turned out that her previous boyfriend had been killed in a racing accident, and I thought oh no... Even her new bloke had a rather messy background. But... eventually it began to seem as if she was just bouncing from one man to another, falling in love almost automatically as soon as she met a new one, and I started to hope that at the end of the book she'd choose neither her husband nor the bloke she "fell in love with" in Key West. She needed to be herself for a while, is what I thought!

Oddly enough, it turned out that when Laura wasn't in Key West, she was in a village south of Cambridge, where she grew up on a farm. When she ended up in hospital - told you there was a bit of edge to the story - it was recognisably the hospital where I worked for years! And I think I've mentioned before that in our village church there's the gravestone of a young man who raced in Formula 1, and was killed... So the book was even more interesting to me for that, and I kept hoping to feel where Laura was, rather than just read about it. Despite the fact that both settings were familiar, though, that never did happen - which is a shame. A sense of place is quite important to me, in books.

The characters and writing were fine though, and it kept me reading, so... it was definitely a bit of a holiday!


Key West, USA - The Longest Holiday by Paige Toon