Review: Interesting read
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 9, 2012
Liz Rose seems to have it all: a handsome husband, a happily married daughter, a career as a well-respected teacher and lifelong friends. But that's because Liz has a mantra that will keep her smiling through everything: `keep faking it'. When her husband is involved in a horrific explosion at work, the carefully plastered-over cracks in Liz's life start to show and faking happiness is suddenly a whole lot harder as she is forced to face up to past mistakes, of both her own making and her husband's. As Liz desperately tries to keep up appearances by bottling her problems up, she finds her situation more and more hopeless and eventually, something has to give.In Liz, Ann Swann has created a flawed heroine that you cannot help but sympathize with, but who will also frustrate you with her stubbornness. She asks her readers to contemplate many moral questions, such as the timely subject of abortion, through the choices her characters make throughout the book. Race and abortion are difficult issues to tackle, and this novel brings across a point of view that is sure to split readers' opinions.  The novel is fluently written by an assured hand, making it easy to read, though the fractured chronology of the narrative is at times difficult to follow. The characters surrounding Liz are well drawn and the problems they all have to face seem real and will most likely strike a chord, or perhaps a nerve, with every reader.Reviewed by Nikki Mason on behalf of BestChickLit.com