Going Dutch - Katie Fforde

pages: 352   published: 2007

Jo is in her fifties and her husband has left her for a younger woman, so she's left the family home and moved onto a barge for a change of life. Dora is in her twenties, and has practically left her fiance at the altar, she needs to get away from everyone she knows for a while, so she moves in with Dora. 

Total chicklit. Heartbroken women getting back on their feet. I like the ocasional chicklit for a holiday read, but I guess the feminist in me is starting to have a hard time with the terrible way women are treated in these books. Shouldn't chicklit strive to make women feel more confident about themselves and want to reach their full potential? I mean, ok, they are not books on feminism, so I shouldn't expect them to end on a woman being single and happy about it. It's going to end with her in a relationship. But couldn't these books at least provide the women with decent men? Jo used to fancy a guy when she was in her twenties, but she barely knew him because at the time she was already with her fiance. Now that she is divorced, 30-years later, she meets him again and suddenly she's in love... Um, excuse me but she doesn't know him. She barely knew him when she was 20, thirty years on he's bound to have changed a little, as she would have too, surely? Oh, and he's a serial dater, who only goes out with beautiful younger women but treats them like shit. Wouldn't that put you off any man? Not Jo (who, let me remind you has just been ditched by her husband for a younger women, so you'd think she'd have a problem with men dating younger women), because this guy is hot and he likes her, so yeah, why try and do better?

Head shake in despair!!