Review: Funny, but....
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 20, 2012
I enjoyed Egan's first book,Diary of a Mummy Misfit. It was witty and bitchy and honest. So I bought this book and read it right away.In the first book, Libby and her husband Ned are stretching themselves to provide a good education for their son. The dire financial problems that Libby and Ned found themselves in were real, but the solution was pretty fairy-tale. The rest of Libby's problems are mostly superficial, so they can get away with being so over-the-top funny.The problems in the second book are much more real--darker, as the title indicates. This book is more about dealing with loss and change and sometimes hurting the people you love. There are still funny and witty bits, but the overall tone is more serious. I did find some of the new characters underdeveloped compared to the first book. Some of the original characters are given bigger roles and fufill them well, so that was a reasonable trade-off.I do recommend reading the first book before this one, as there is too much backstory for the sequel to be a stand-alone novel.***Spoiler Alert***Issues I had with this book:In the first book, I thought all the characters drank to excess. Ok, the whole book had a lot of silly excess of one sort or another, so it kind of fit with the story line. But by the middle of the second book I started to become uncomfortable with the amount of drinking. One character, who (at least) refrains from drinking during her pregnancy, immediately after the birth wants to get drunk because she's deprived herself of alcohol for 9 months. This isn't funny any more. These people are alcoholics who start drinking in the morning and get totally sloshed almost every day.The other thing I had an issue with is that Libby and Fenella form a group with a couple of new moms who also find themselves shut out by the superficial rich self-centered mothers. Libby and her friends start calling themselves the Anti-Mummies. However, these two groups eventually become more similar than the author might have intended. I found that disappointing.If these aren't issues for you, and you liked the first book, you'll probably enjoy the sequel. I do plan to read Egan's latest book, even though it's a somewhat different genre.