PositiveThe Times (UK)[Keyes\'] particular gift is the ability to settle the reader into a comfortable seat, then carry them to the darkest places; to make serious things funny — and moving ... Just because something slips down easily, it doesn’t mean it isn’t strong stuff ... Again, Rachel is not her best work. Keyes’s style — absorbing and pacey, but with a tendency towards exposition and excessive adjectives — is slightly off her usual mark. Her delight in contemporary references, which worked beautifully when she was 35, now land a little wincingly ... On the other hand, it remains refreshing to find a book about a fortysomething woman with a satisfying sex life who is neither villainous nor mad ... She handles with intelligence and humour the issues that the question of long-term addiction recovery throws up: what it means to be an addict decades after your last hit; how the darkest of human experiences might weaken even the strongest resolve. Like the original, this is not a frivolous novel; the moment when the great tragedy of Rachel’s later life is revealed punches out of the pages with a brutality that would leave any self-respecting chick-flicker shaking in their sparkly shoes. But there’s plenty of romance to enjoy too. It’s almost as though good writers can do more than one thing.
