So after ploughing through it this weekend (it really is awful) I have now finished the book that inspired me to start this thread. It was a travesty, awful plot with no character development and clunky dialogue. And as a previous poster pointed out, we’re not sure if Adele knows that ‘musty’ means old and unwashed, not ‘musky’ which at least could mean a bit sexy, and ‘to whelp’ does not mean exclaim in ecstasy, it means to birth puppies.
Here is a summary of the events:
This rather insular ‘gang’ who met at an NCT group (presumably to make all their children the same age) had a big thing about playing the lottery every week (the heroine is in fact weirdly obsessed about the lottery) Apparently they’d never even won a tenner before, but on this occasion they win 18million (this amount changed several times) but, to two of the couples chagrin, they are not actually in the syndicate because of not paying their £2, or slagging off the lottery, or something like that. EXCEPT THEY DIDN’T PULL OUT!!! Lies!!! Our wet-blanket-devoid-of-personality-do-gooder-heroine has fucked them over, and told the lottery people the others weren’t in, because one of them is having an affair with her husband and the another is a dodgy landlord.
So this couple that seem to have quite a nice marriage, and he’s seemingly quite a good albeit lazy parent, suddenly have a windfall and burn through it like no one’s business. Lexi, the heroine, gifts someone from the she helps at the CAB three million pounds, because he’s hot and also because his wife and child are dead. But also he’s hot, and kind and gentle, not like her husband. I’m unsure of where a lot of the money actually went. The teenage daughter with a penchant for musty balls is hiding a secret pregnancy. There’s a younger son too, but no one seems to bother much about him.
They throw a huge party, seemingly for everyone they know, but with no mention of their extended family. It’s essentially a mini-festival blown up to ridiculous proportions and a platform for all the local teens to get off their faces, which everyone is fine about, because the hosts are lottery winners. The teenage daughter, dressed in a purple leotard and not much else, because the party planner told her it was ok and her mum is a husk of a parent, has a bit too much and after a vomit in the surrounding woods, gets beaten and shoved in a burlap and gets taken away. Oh! The mum missed three hours of her own party because the hot Moldovan is having a farewell party, ad this party is better, because even though most of the guests are from Eastern Europe and work as cleaners or delivery drivers, they can talk about literature and stuff, unlike, perfect English, and cook really nice food that she hasn’t tried before, and this is apparently a big revelation to our heroine, and not meant to come across as condescending at all.
On discovering the fifteen year old is missing, only her mother is horrified, everyone else just assumes she’s ‘passed out somewhere’. They don’t call the police because the kidnappers say not to. Of course there’s a vigil at the lottery winner’s house where they wait for news, and drink coffee from the expensive machine, and admire the kitchen fittings, and take nice showers. Mostly they drink the expensive coffee. They don’t tell the teenage son his sister has been kidnapped, they just let him play video games in his room, and he doesn’t ask why everyone is staying up in the kitchen drinking coffee, because he doesn’t need to come down to eat or get a drink or anything, because he’s a prop teenage boy, not a real teenage boy. He doesn’t ask why his sister hasn’t come home from the party. The pregnancy comes out, no one is that horrified about their fifteen year olds having sex and making a baby, just ‘they didn’t know they were having sex’. Seriously, the lack of parenting in this book is unreal. The writer is a mum herself so I’m not really sure what’s going on with that.
Ooh! The husband has somehow worked out where the kidnapped daughter is and nips out to get her, casually depositing ten minion pounds as ransom on the way. He takes the Ferrari so gets there nice and quick. Unfortunately she’s in a bad way, and has been beaten up, and doesn’t have a baby anymore because if being kicked around, which is a weight off of everyone’s mind.
After three days in the hospital in a nice private room and no counselling even though she was beaten up and bound and gagged in a barn and thought she’d be raped then murdered, the daughter is home and a bit sad about how the party turned out, but wants to go and see her former best mate, who shock horror reveals it was her dad behind the kidnap. The reason is he wanted ten million to run off with one of the other women in the gang, I forget which one, maybe both?
There’s a trial. Some people go to prison. People are disgusted. The judge has teenage daughters too so he is REALLY disgusted. The dad only meant to rough her up a bit but fell in with some gangsters and they did what gangsters do. Oops.
Anyway, it’s summer now and the heroine and her two children who are ‘doing fine’ and don’t have PTSD went to Moldova to see where the hot guy and the three million are at, and they think he’s doing really good work so they might do some of it in the U.K. They still live in their fancy house they rented after the win, but they will return to their old semi soon because they’ve built a conservatory on it.
There’s some money left but we are not sure how much. But hey ho, easy come, easy go! Some things are more important, right?
The End