ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley
Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley is published by Hutchinson Heinemann and is out now. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy.
What happens when you find love, but life keeps getting in the way?
When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and – he insists – half an inch taller than the average British male. His charming four-year-old daughter, Zora, only adds to his appeal.
And yet ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam (though let’s face it, mostly Coralie) have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dreamed of, Coralie has lost something she once had: herself.
Set against an eventful decade that included the soap opera of five Prime Ministers plus Brexit and Covid, Consider Yourself Kissed puts the subjects of love and family on a grand stage, bringing to life how the intimate drama in our homes inescapably competes for energy and attention with the shared drama of our times.
Consider Yourself Kissed is a captivating portrait of a woman in love which effortlessly balances sweetness with bite, the public with the personal, and humour with heart.
Consider Yourself Kissed is the story of Adam and Coralie and their lives in London over the course of a decade. Coralie is Australian and meets Adam when she saves his little girl, Zora, from a pond. They’re instantly drawn to each other, a whirlwind romance which gave me all the feels as they fall in love and then begin a life together.
This is a book about real life, about all the highs and lows of being in a partnership with someone, all those moments of feeling like everyone else is getting it right and having such a brilliant time while you slog along day by day, keeping all the balls in the air and seemingly achieving nothing. Coralie feels like her ambitions have been pushed aside in favour of Adam’s work, the kids’ wellbeing and everybody else in her life’s needs (not to mention her frankly hideous father!). All of this is set against a backdrop of the most important political events of the time: Brexit, the conveyor belt of Prime Ministers and Covid, which makes it extremely relevant for the reader who cannot fail to remember it all so vividly.
This is such a superb character-driven debut from Jessica Stanley. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s poignant and it has characters to love and relate to. I love this kind of story that is full of the minutiae of life, so rich with detail that I felt I was a part of Adam and Coralie’s lives. Highly recommended for a grown up love story, warts and all.
JESSICA STANLEY is an Australian novelist who moved to London for love in 2011. Before that, she worked in journalism, on the set of Neighbours, for the trade union movement and in advertising. Of all the jobs she’s had, writing Consider Yourself Kissed was the most fun. She lives with her husband and three children in Hackney.