All the Wrong Places tells the story of Paige Hamilton, her mother, Joan, her cousin, Heather, and best friend, Chloe.
Paige lives with her mother in a two-bedroom condo in Boston after the break up of her relationship a couple of months before, when she discovered her live-in boyfriend, Noah, in bed with her cousin, Heather.
Paige has had a bad run of luck in recent years: six months ago, she lost her job as a director of strategic planning in an advertising agency when the firm was taken over by a larger New York company. Her father, Robert, died from cancer two years ago and her uncle, Ted, his twin, is now celebrating his 80th birthday with a big party. Paige is still grieving his loss and the injustice that his inferior twin (‘this living, breathing replica’) is alive and her father isn’t.
Her cousin, Heather, has always been incredibly jealous of Paige and copies her in all areas of life – clothes, hairstyles, career, men – and regularly puts Paige down and mocks her. She’s not a very nice person and I was willing her to get her comeuppance!
Chloe discovers that her husband of eight years, Matt, is on lots of dating sites and this is the final straw after years of emotional and physical abuse and affairs and she kicks him out and files for divorce. They have two young children together, Josh (aged 6) and Sasha (aged 4), who struggle to understand what is happening.
In contrast to Paige, Chloe’s mother, Jennifer, is rather unsupportive and selfish and dancing is her passion; she regularly leaves town to take part in competitions across the country. She also drinks heavily and can’t be trusted to look after Josh and Sasha.
Paige’s mother, Joan, is 70 and at an age where she’s worried that every twinge is a brain tumour, stroke or heart attack. She regularly phones Paige complaining of various ailments. She decides to start online dating after Paige encourages her to have a go and helps set up her profile.
The story follows the ups and downs of the women’s lives as they struggle to overcome all the adversities thrown at them, and it was an engaging read as we learnt more about them all and got to know their characters. Interspersed with this are sections where we discover more about the rather menacing and disturbing Mr Right Now as he woos women then works his way through them, quite literally!
I was really intrigued by the premise behind this book – so many people do online dating these days and it’s moved on a lot from when I took part several years ago now! What’s all this swiping business?! It’s rather frightening that you never really know who you’re meeting online and it’s important to take precautions and always meet somewhere public, even if the person you’re meeting seems really charming like Mr Right Now!
I really liked Paige and her mum, Joan, they both seemed lovely and had a great relationship. They both encouraged each other in their dating exploits and Joan was very supportive, even if she rather overshared at times! There were some amusing interchanges between them, with good humour.
The book contained some lovely friendships between women and the undercurrent of evil running throughout the book in the form of serial killer, Mr Right Now, worked really well as he kept popping up and texting women from time to time, just when you’d hoped he’d gone away!
This was an entertaining read and a good mix of genres with the contrast of psychological thriller and women’s fiction. The book was well written and I liked the way the strands and layers of story were put together. The women were all closely linked, even if they weren’t all friendly with each other. The story contained a variety of themes and they were all well handled.
Mr Right Now was a really creepy and menacing character and the thought of someone like that preying on women on dating sites was rather horrific! He was charming and attractive and knew exactly what to say to lure women in.
The ending was great: I enjoyed the way the story was tied up but there was still some ambiguity and you weren’t quite sure what had happened.
This was my first book by Joy Fielding but I’ll definitely be checking out her other books now. Looks like she’s written quite a few!
Paige lives with her mother in a two-bedroom condo in Boston after the break up of her relationship a couple of months before, when she discovered her live-in boyfriend, Noah, in bed with her cousin, Heather.
Paige has had a bad run of luck in recent years: six months ago, she lost her job as a director of strategic planning in an advertising agency when the firm was taken over by a larger New York company. Her father, Robert, died from cancer two years ago and her uncle, Ted, his twin, is now celebrating his 80th birthday with a big party. Paige is still grieving his loss and the injustice that his inferior twin (‘this living, breathing replica’) is alive and her father isn’t.
Her cousin, Heather, has always been incredibly jealous of Paige and copies her in all areas of life – clothes, hairstyles, career, men – and regularly puts Paige down and mocks her. She’s not a very nice person and I was willing her to get her comeuppance!
Chloe discovers that her husband of eight years, Matt, is on lots of dating sites and this is the final straw after years of emotional and physical abuse and affairs and she kicks him out and files for divorce. They have two young children together, Josh (aged 6) and Sasha (aged 4), who struggle to understand what is happening.
In contrast to Paige, Chloe’s mother, Jennifer, is rather unsupportive and selfish and dancing is her passion; she regularly leaves town to take part in competitions across the country. She also drinks heavily and can’t be trusted to look after Josh and Sasha.
Paige’s mother, Joan, is 70 and at an age where she’s worried that every twinge is a brain tumour, stroke or heart attack. She regularly phones Paige complaining of various ailments. She decides to start online dating after Paige encourages her to have a go and helps set up her profile.
The story follows the ups and downs of the women’s lives as they struggle to overcome all the adversities thrown at them, and it was an engaging read as we learnt more about them all and got to know their characters. Interspersed with this are sections where we discover more about the rather menacing and disturbing Mr Right Now as he woos women then works his way through them, quite literally!
I was really intrigued by the premise behind this book – so many people do online dating these days and it’s moved on a lot from when I took part several years ago now! What’s all this swiping business?! It’s rather frightening that you never really know who you’re meeting online and it’s important to take precautions and always meet somewhere public, even if the person you’re meeting seems really charming like Mr Right Now!
I really liked Paige and her mum, Joan, they both seemed lovely and had a great relationship. They both encouraged each other in their dating exploits and Joan was very supportive, even if she rather overshared at times! There were some amusing interchanges between them, with good humour.
The book contained some lovely friendships between women and the undercurrent of evil running throughout the book in the form of serial killer, Mr Right Now, worked really well as he kept popping up and texting women from time to time, just when you’d hoped he’d gone away!
This was an entertaining read and a good mix of genres with the contrast of psychological thriller and women’s fiction. The book was well written and I liked the way the strands and layers of story were put together. The women were all closely linked, even if they weren’t all friendly with each other. The story contained a variety of themes and they were all well handled.
Mr Right Now was a really creepy and menacing character and the thought of someone like that preying on women on dating sites was rather horrific! He was charming and attractive and knew exactly what to say to lure women in.
The ending was great: I enjoyed the way the story was tied up but there was still some ambiguity and you weren’t quite sure what had happened.
This was my first book by Joy Fielding but I’ll definitely be checking out her other books now. Looks like she’s written quite a few!