Blog Tour - The Mum Who'd Had Enough by Fiona Gibson

A busy weekend on the blog this weekend! Today I am pleased to be taking part in Fiona Gibson's blog tour to celebrate the publication of 'The Woman Who'd Had Enough'.

The voice of modern women is back! Perfect for fans of Milly Johnson and Carole Matthews.

After sixteen years of marriage, Nate and Sinead Turner have a nice life.  They like their jobs, they like their house and they love their son Flynn. Yes, it's a very nice life.

Or, at least Nate thinks so. Until, one morning, he wakes to find Sinead goneand a note lying on the kitchen table listing all the things he does wrong or doesn't do at all.

Nate needs to show Sinead he can be a better husband - fast. But as he works through Sinead's list, his life changes in unexpected ways. And he starts to wonder whether he wants them to go back to normal after all. Could there be more to life than nice?

I really enjoyed this book. It is one of those books that makes you laugh out loud while also thinking 'I do that' or 'I can relate to that'. Fiona Gibson is a fabulous author who is writes great novels which are observational. I am sure that her characters must be based on real life people who she has seen around and from conversations she has had overheard or had with girl friends. 

I highly recommend this book as a great book to get lost in over the summer - perfect for a sun lounger or beach read to throw into a holiday bag this summer.

The author, Fiona Gibson, joins me on my blog today to share with my readers her thoughts on What is Middle Age?

WHAT DOES MIDLIFE REALLY MEAN?

Have you noticed the term ‘midlife’ being bandied around a lot? I quite like it. It’s definitely preferable to middle-aged, which has terrible connotations (stuffy, past it, looking sneeringly at young people). When I was writing my new novel, The Mum Who’d Had Enough, I thought a lot about what this lifestage means for women - our hopes and fears, how we relate to our young adult offspring and feel about our own adult relationships, our working lives and all that stuff.

When I started writing novels around fifteen years ago, my main characters were in the midst of new motherhood and coping with babies and toddlers. These days I’m more interested in the experiences my friends and I are all going through now. You might be familiar with night sweats, mood swings and being unable to remember where you parked the car. Irritating, yes - but on those plus side we can blame everything that goes wrong on the menopause. Also, it provides tons of stuff write about.

As I began to plan this new book, I asked my friends to share the aspects of arriving at midlife which they hadn’t expected to happen. Here’s what they told me.

Midlife means…  

Shunning fashion trends. Clothes are still important; no one I know wishes to flop into a puddle of beige. However one-season ‘must haves’ no longer feature on our radar at all. I love this aspect of growing older; that we know what suits us and pretty much stick within this parameters. Shopping is a breeze when you can zoom in on the kind of pieces you love, and be done with it. Last weekend, I bought every item I needed for a weekend away, and a forthcoming two-week holiday, in a single hour, in one shop.

Hair. Not just head hair, which has started to turn rather brittle, no matter how much conditioner we slather on - but those facial hairs. Weirdly, these are invisible during mirror checks at home - but appear suddenly when we venture out in bright sunlight. Occasionally, a kind friend might grab at one and pull it off.

A new-found cautiousness. Once bold and reckless, surviving on Silk Cut and cheap wine, now we shred all our paperwork and consider installing CCTV outside our homes. Whilst we used to trot out bare-legged of an evening, now we worry about everyone being warm enough. In fact, shouldn’t you be wearing a coat?

Hobbies! Yes, they sound a little old ladyish, but when our kids fly and nest we find ourselves with tons more time on our hands. Even if they’re still living with us, our domestic workload is dramatically reduced as, generally speaking, they are capable of operating the washing machine. Feeling newly liberated and energised, we can start going to classes and learning new things. It’s a bit like going back to school - without the dismal uniforms and terrible dinners.

On the other hand… we no longer feel guilty about doing very little. A perfect Sunday can mean listening to Radio 6 Music and reading the papers. No one feels pressurised to have hilarious anecdotes to share at work on Monday morning, and we’re done with competing over who has the whizziest life. If this is what they call midlife, then I’m liking it very much.

Fiona’s latest novel, The Mum Who’d Had Enough, is published as an ebook on June 14, and is out in paperback in July

Thank you to Fiona and her publishers, Avon Books, for inviting me to take part in this blog tour in return for an honest review of the book.