Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy

Minding Frankie was a bit of a strange read for me.

I’d love to say that I really enjoyed it but for personal reasons I found certain parts of the book very difficult to read. As a sort of sub plot within the book we witness the diagnosis of a man with lung cancer and how he deteriorates and eventually passes away from the disease. This was sadly rather close to home with a great-granddad passing in much the same way. And while I commend the author for what seemed like a very realistic portrayal it was rather to hard for me to read.

But away from that we had the story of Noel and his discovery that he is a dad to a baby girl named Frankie. There’s a real sense of community in this book as everyone bands together to help Noel care for his new daughter and to support him in facing his demons in life. And while having so many characters is interesting it did leave me very confused and I often couldn’t work out just who was who especially all of the different families who live in St Jarleth’s cresent.

I also wasn’t overly fond of Emily as a character. She seemed to take over and monopolise everyone. Everyone became too reliant on her in such a short space of time it seems entirely implausible that they had survived a life without her. The doctors surgery cannot locate documents without Emily and hospital staff cannot find the best bus route to the hospital that they already work in. I also didn’t really like Moira but I guess as she’s the sort of villain of the piece that was too be expected.

I think though my main issue with the novel is the plot twist. I’m not going to spoil it for you but for me it destroyed the book. It came almost completely out of nowhere and didn’t add anything. I don’t think the ending would have suffered any without it and I don’t think it adds anymore to the novel. It just doesn’t really seem to fit.

I think that if a few things had been different this would have been a favourite of mine. Sadly I can’t change them.  And one thing I didn’t really get from the book was just who was St Jarleth and what did he actually do?