Review: The Happiness Project

Title:  The Happiness Project

Author: Pippa James

Publisher: 12th February 2019 by Bookouture

Pages: 343 pages
How I Read It: ARC book
Genre: womens fiction, chick lit

My Rating: 2 cups

Synopsis:

Forty-year-old Alison Lund has always carefully planned everything in her well-ordered life, from colour co-ordinating her beautiful house to persuading her excitable son Alexander that sticker charts are more fun than misbehaving. But Alison’s perfect world has just fallen apart…

Her head is left spinning when her beloved larger than life mother-in-law, Maggie, passes away and Alison is left heartbroken. Every afternoon they’d talk and laugh over a pot of tea, she was the glue that kept Alison together through the first few tough years of motherhood. And now Alison is trying to figure out a future without her.

With a little help from her two best friends, Alison resolves to be more Maggie. After an emotional New Year’s Eve get together, the three women create a happiness project, challenging themselves to step outside their comfort zones and make the most of every single day.

Daring to do things differently, can Alison learn to live more spontaneously and find happiness along the way? Or will letting go be harder than she ever imagined?

My Thoughts

I was drawn to this book through the promise of making positive changes in an effort to bring more happiness into one’s life. Three friends decide to start the new year afresh with the goal of reaching greater heights of happiness - through either a job, health or new family outlook.

I felt the author tried to make the interactions between the three friends as down to earth and realistic as possible, however for me, it just did not work. Perhaps, those that read the first book (this is the second in the series but can be read as a stand-alone) may have found a greater connection to the characters, unfortunately I really struggled and found them underdeveloped on the whole.

There also appeared to be much unresolved, for example, rather strange that it is a year’s resolution yet the book ends within the first few months of the year. As mentioned, I found some of the characters - main and secondary - behaviour at times, to not quite gel and I didn’t really empathise with them. So all up, a well written story that will definitely appeal to some with its classic chick lit approach in both character and story - for me, however, it just fell a little flat which is disappointing as the premise was a worthy one.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release