IOU by @helencwarner a review #fridayreads #amreading

The lovely folks at Simon and Schuster sent me a copy of IOU by Helen Warner to review. Thanks guys I quite liked it.

Here's what Amazon have to say about it:
Amy has enjoyed a charmed life, shopping and lunching while the nanny looks after her children. Until her world is thrown into disarray when husband Ben's business collapses overnight, taking their house and savings with it. Suddenly Amy finds herself the breadwinner. Can she rise to the challenge? Will her marriage survive such an upheaval? Or is it a case of 'Till Debt Do Us Part'? Kate has always had to struggle by, juggling her job with two children and a husband, though she wouldn't have it any other way. But her safe little world is rocked when she meets enigmatic Jack in a chance encounter. Feeling increasingly estranged from husband Miles, Kate wonders if Jack can offer her a fresh start. But there's something about Jack that Kate doesn't know...Jennifer is only just beginning to recover from the death of her own husband. When Jennifer makes contact with old flame Hugh she unlocks a dangerous Pandora's box. She is desperate to find the answer to a question that has tormented her for decades. But will she be able to cope with the truth?

One thing I like about doing book reviews is that it introduces me to new authors and/or genres of books I wouldn't normally touch. IOU is in one of the genres I read but haven't been reading much of lately so it probably wouldn't have been an obvious one for me to pick up, especially as Helen Warner is a new author to me.

I liked this book, it's perfectly paced. Occasionally I thought something was going to be the next plot point only to find it was mentioned almost in passing and the next chapter started a few days or weeks in the future. I did guess one of the major twists before it was revealed. I was surprised by it in a way because whilst I'd figured it out I'd expected it to be really sinister but it wasn't at all. It's a good book. If the twist had been handled how I expected it would have been a very different book.

The end surprised me. I'm not sure what I expected but it wasn't that. The final page also contains the term (word?) IOU which I think is the only time it's used. That surprised me given its the title of the book and made me wonder why it was chosen.




Finally, I feel it important to note that this book has nothing to do with weddings. Probably more indicative of how my mind works than the book but... I had the book on my bedside table for 10 days or so before I read it. Face down. Every time I caught sight of it I would think how much the design on the back looked like a wedding invitation. I don't know why.