Breakaway Books

Authored by Marian Keyes; Published 1995; Romance

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

I listened to Watermelon rather than reading it, and I must say, it was an excellent way to experience the novel. Throughout the whole wild ride of it, it felt like I was catching up with a girlfriend over drinks and then dinner and then dessert and then more drinks. 

Watermelon is certainly a book of its time. Clare, abandoned by her husband on the day of the birth of their first child, flees to Ireland and starts to rebuild her life. When she first re-encounters her ex-husband, and he blames her for supposedly rotten behavior throughout their marriage, my 2024 brain all but burst with the thought: this is gaslighting! But this is a novel from 1995, and while most female readers almost certainly would read the plot now and immediately pick up on the manipulation, I’m not sure that was true when it was written. Of course, her ex-husband did seem exaggeratedly villainous, but, to me, it only added to the escapism value of the book.

I delighted in the humor of it. Not just from Clare’s internal monologue, which was exquisitely funny, but also of her brash family. The episode in which Clare describes her family’s learned aversion to cooking after several disastrous run-ins between her mother and the kitchen had me in stitches. 

The primary romance plot was heavy on miscommunication–actually, both Clare’s new flame and her old marriage featured extraordinarily poor communication on a number of fronts. It was just on the verge of frustrating to me as the reader, but what romance could exist without a goodly amount of vague wording later misinterpreted in the worst possible way. 

It was immensely satisfying to see Clare finally realize just how loved she is without her ex-husband and to begin to appreciate her own value. Her new boyfriend is great and all, I’m sure–although the ending between them felt a little rushed to me–but the best happy ending is the one she has with herself, and with her family. 

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I looked forward to reading the adventures of the other sisters.