The Man I Loved Before by Anna Mansell
Genre: Chick lit, Women's fiction, Contemporary fiction
Read: 20th June 2020
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 10th March 2020)
★ 1 star
I honestly have no idea why I requested this book because I am not a fan of women's fiction. I can only assume it was the premise that attracted me because it did sound appealing however, the actual delivery did not. I'm not saying the book failed...just that it did for me.
I honestly did not like Jem. The woman is a walking nightmare. The probable new man in her life got it right when he christened her "Calamity Jem"...because that is indeed what she is. She spends the entire time second guessing herself in all shapes and sizes, over-analysing just about every choice she has made, will make or didn't make.
To make matters worse, she writes a letter to her ex, Ben, detailing every bad thing she has ever done knowing that he will never read it. That is, until her ever helpful and wonderful mother posts it. So what does Jem do? Stakes out the wrong post box to try and grab the letter when the post van comes to empty the box. But mum was going uptown and posted it elsewhere so that by the time Jem arrives, it's too late. Then what does she do? Goes to the post office to try and get it back. Of course they aren't going to just give her a letter addressed to someone else!
So what else is there left for Calamity Jem to do? I know! Let's jump in a barely reliable twenty year old car and drive 6 hours from Derbyshire to Cornwall and intercept it before it reaches Ben! Great idea!!
So here's Jem, making her way down to Cornwall, when she realises this may not be a great idea after all. I mean, Ben did state when he left her a year ago that he never wanted to see her again...so why was she driving hundreds of miles to where he moved to - a place "they" had dreamed of settling together - to try and intercept a letter she still has no legal right to? Does she think the postie is just going to hand it over to her? Er...no.
Then Jem arrives in Cornwall. And what does she do? It's late, the mail won't be delivered till the morning, she goes to the pub. And gets herself three sheets to the wind and ends up sleeping in her car. Why? Because it's the height of the holiday season and there are no accommodation vacancies anywhere in St Ives...and probably all of Cornwall, for that matter.
So the next morning she stakes out Ben's place and is so shocked to see the front door open and a woman with the baby walk out calling "I love you, babe" and Ben appearing in the doorway for the said woman to give him a parting kiss, that she slinks into an alleyway...and misses the post being delivered. Well, that was a giant waste of time and a shedload of money spent on fuel for a 12 hour round trip that produced precisely nothing! So Jem jumps back in her car and drives back to Derbyshire, which seems to take a lot less longer than it did to get there.
Meanwhile, her best friend Leanne had set Jem up on Tinder, declaring it was time she moved on and got on with her life. Leanne was surprised to see someone they knew from school over twenty years ago on there and when Jem wasn't looking, she swiped right. Next thing she knew, Jem was getting a message from this Mitch Black from school. Coincidentally, after leaving Leanne's in an attempt to get back the letter that should never have been posted, she bumped into Mitch at the post office that afternoon. They exchanged numbers and a promise to catch up for coffee when she returned from her mysterious trip...ie. Cornwall.
Jem was so focused on her own problems that she failed to see anything else. And her obsession over self-analyising and over thinking irritated me. This is a grown woman of 38 whose life is an apparent train wreck. She should know better. She should be married with two point four kids. I did, however, enjoy her banter with Mitch. It was entertaining and at least took the focus off Jem herself.
I'm not sure what THE MAN I LOVED BEFORE was meant to be about or address, but as I'm not a fan of chick lit/women's fiction it completely missed its mark with me. And honestly I didn't have the patience to stick with the book to find out Jem's backstory of why Ben left her, why she lost her job and why she ended up bankrupt. In the end, I didn't care enough to stick around to find out.
Having said that, THE MAN I LOVED BEFORE will appeal to plenty of other readers. Just not me. I wish I could get into it but after over a quarter of the book and still I'd rather gouge my eyes out than put up with any more. The pace of the book was as slow as the traffic on the A30 on Bodmin. So slow that Jem had to turn her engine off. That slow. I didn't see it going anywhere after 30%, so I gave up and left it there.
I would like to thank #AnnaMansell, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheManILovedBefore in exchange for an honest review.
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