A decade of living for the weekends

THE WEEKENDS OF YOU AND ME by Fiona Walker (Sphere £7.99)

THIS has definite shades of David Nicholls’s hugely successful One Day, in concept and context.

While his book famously examines two people’s nonrelationship on the same day every year for 20 years, this novel focuses on one couple’s annual weekend away in rural Shropshire over a decade.

The big difference is that Walker’s protagonists Jo and Harry are in a real-life, wartsand-all love affair.

We follow them from their initial meeting to dealing with the various demands of children and careers and financial and domestic constraints, which lead to occasionally dramatic arguments about where they should live and whose work should take precedence.

Both are beautifully drawn, fully rounded and eminently believable characters, and the narrative zips along as it describes their love, laughter, rows, tears, and fears.

I liked them from the start and found their negotiation of all aspects of their partnership fascinating. Their flaws only served to make them more human and sometimes, of course, humans screw up.

This is emotionally intelligent and beautifully written and I raced through, hoping that Jo and Harry would make it.

FIRST COMES LOVE by Emily Giffin (Hodder £7.99)

JOSIE and Meredith are sisters whose uneasy teenage relationship becomes more fractious after their adored older brother Daniel dies in a car accident.

Each deals — or doesn’t deal — with grief differently, retreating so far physically and emotionally from each other that pleasant sisterly communication is impossible.

Meredith gives up her highflying legal career to marry Nolan, Daniel’s best friend, and moves home to Atlanta to be a wife and mother.

Josie’s long-term relationship breaks down and she believes she is the black sheep of the family, not helped by her single status and inclination to party.

Resentment, jealousy and bitterness mean Josie and Meredith can hardly talk without things dissolving into nasty arguments. Both blame the other while secretly wishing their lives were different.

The chapters alternate between the sisters, giving each of their perspectives.

Giffin is a great writer and the psychologically complex narrative races along, making for compulsive reading.

This is a compelling portrait of a family in crisis; warm, witty, wise and so honest it occasionally made me wince. I loved it.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY by Melissa Pimentel (Michael Joseph £7.99)

RUBY is so focused on her allconsuming career and hectic life in Manhattan she barely has time to spare a thought for her little sister’s imminent English wedding, and the fact that she will see her ex, Ethan, there for the first time in ten years.

But as soon as she steps off the plane, puffy-eyed and sleepdeprived, there he is and all her old feelings come flooding back, threatening to drown her in the deluge.

Forced to spend time with Ethan, who is now a multimillionaire tech genius as well as her future brother-in-law’s best man, Ruby must confront aspects of her past, and indeed of herself, that she would much rather leave deeply buried.

It’s not long before she starts to wonder if she made the right decision all those years ago.

If it’s an easy, breezy and undemanding read you want, you should enjoy this.