You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The common thread and main topic is love, under all its forms : parental, brotherly, friendship, romantic love, love of life. The “friend” is a mysterious lodger who works to help the brothers who all have problems in their lives.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. He meets a girl on the job and they hit it off, but when Ned makes a move, she turns him down stating that he hasn't grown up yet. It’s an enjoyable easy listen to what is a family drama set with unconventional parents and their 3 sons and associated relationships.It's something a little bit different from the normal run of the mill with strong characters and an interesting story with a bit of a moral thrown in. With this book she has left the realm of "chick lit" behind and this book should appeal to male and female readers alike. The only reason I didn’t give it one star is because I did finish it so either I am a fool or it deserves two stars for tricking me into hanging in there.

Brothers Tony, Sean, and Ned had the perfect upbringing, but now that they are grown up, real life is starting to get in the way.Ned left his girlfriend and took off to Australia, only to come back to his girlfriend with the perfect life, and all of his friends gone. This one reminded me of a cross between Ralph's Party, the Making of Us and The House We Grew Up In so if you liked any of those I am sure you will like this one too! The title is misleading; the friend of the family was like a pathetic Mary Poppins for adult children. This refreshing look into the inner workings of brothers is a huge leap forward and something I was thrilled to see. I wonder whether after reading their stories you will also think that all 3 boys were spoilt too much by their parents or whether we just saw them at their lowest points of their lives.

Their 40th wedding anniversary is coming up so dad plans a big surprise party and all the boys come home. The characters are witty and real, their dilemmas are poignant, and Lisa Jewell ties the whole thing together with enough romance to satisfy even the most jaded reader. It was an easy read and I felt quite sad after it ended because I liked the characters and wanted to know how their lives continued. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. His high school sweetheart was regular and normal and boring, but this new girl was exciting and thrilling.

The only criticism I have of A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, is that a bit of the information about pregnancy was slightly inaccurate (such as she states that the pregnant character was unable to take any medications, not even Tylenol or a cough lozenge). I loved Ralph's Party and Thirtysomething -- cute chick novels -- but her writing took some impressive proportions with One-Hit Wonder, and she has outdone herself with A Friend of the Family. Their parents have a new lodger, Gervase—why is Bernie, their mother, so keen to give this unsavory waif a home? With barely ten pages to go everything is going perfectly and gets tied up witb a neat bow just as Gervase decide's to disappear from the London family home.

We get to know each family character, the good the bad the ugly and insight and the hidden agendas behind this family dynamics.It's just a nice, comforting (even with the slight every-day-drama included) story that you like to have there even if it's not mind blowing. Since then she has written another twenty novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs and The Night She Disappeared.