Again, Rachel: The love story of the summer (Walsh Family, 6)

Product Information

While I know they added a bit to Rachel's own story, I just didn't care enough about her clients at The Cloisters to want to read so much about them.

The same kind of heart touching awareness and pain and love, as in the first Rachel book, and at the same time, new poignant twists and turns revealing the rest of Rachel and Luke’s story. The two are middle-aged now and have spent years apart, but Keyes manages to emphasise their connection so powerfully that I, along with Rachel, went from hating him and being so cross with him, to slowly warming to him, to falling in love with him all over again. In what ways do Rachel’s personal struggles impact her role as a rehab counse l lor in Again, Rachel ?The topics discussed in this book were certainly important but the book itself was long winded and become a struggle to read at times with so many different people in and out of the addiction center. I totally forgot how mad and unique this clan was but I didn’t take long for me to get myself reacquainted with this fun-loving family.

I hate it when an author does a sequel or a series and personalities that were interesting and intriguing, that made you want to come back for more, have vanished and we have reconstituted versions.In this one, Rachel is an addiction counsellor, and Keyes had a good time writing the group counselling scenes. Marian brings back the patients and their heartbreaking yet entertaining stories that I found so involving in Rachel’s Holiday. It is packed to the rafters with those familiar, hilarious sayings that are uttered by the magnificent Mammy Walsh, yet it will totally break the reader in places.

Right before Marian came out with The Mystery of Mercy Close, she wrote a refresher to catch everybody up with the Walshes and kind of get them up to speed. In Again, Rachel, we find her, decades on, still sober and now head counsellor at the very rehab centre where she found sobriety all those years ago. I learned a huge amount about addiction recovery and how addiction can take on many forms and go through many pathways. I miss Rachel and her mad sisters and mother already, so I might be tempted into reading the other Walsh books just to get another chance to spend time with them all, though I fear none will surpass how wonderful this one was. It's been 20 years but she reminds herself daily how happy and proud she is to have faced her demons and come out whole.So much of their time they’re plagued by suspicion, fear, thwarted hope, frustration, anger, and then, when they’ve finally convinced their loved one to get help, they usually feel terrible guilt. The audio is highly recommended, and as an added bonus there is a lovely interview with the author and Graham Norton at the end. Holy crap, some of the love scenes were on fire, again due to how well Keyes wielded emotions and sensations. This is all then retrofitted to provide the standard romance happy ending where it was all a misunderstanding. In fact, I enjoyed this so much that for the last 5 days I tried to avoid listening to it because I didn’t want it to end.

Their sisterhood, portrayed with warmth and humour , suggests that Keyes might be channel l ing some of her familial experiences. I did finish it, and am ambivalent about the time spent doing so - sometimes you really do need to make up your own mind - so I’m going with a generous two stars. She has her finger in many pies from teaching to being a senior library consultant at Consilium Education to being executive editor at NotesVilla. And the thing was, Helen would speak unpalatable truths when everyone else was too scared to open their mouths.If they were teenagers some of their behaviours could have been tolerated but as mature women they were ridiculous at times. Each of them have their own wonderfully created story, and each of them shines a light on some of the darkest of issues. While some relationship elements weren’t exactly to my tastes or expectations, it was good to be involved.