What Now? - Shari Low

Reading Challenge Category: Free ARC from NetGalley

Official Blurb:

Twenty years ago, Carly Cooper went on an epic quest to track down all the men she’d ever loved and lost in the hope that one of them was her Mr Right.
Now, two decades and two teenage sons later, she thinks she might have got it all wrong.
As the years have passed, lots of things have changed, leaving Carly asking ‘What Now?’
With a divorce and an empty nest on the horizon, Carly sets off once more to Los Angeles with her band of trusty girlfriends, to find the carefree, wild and adventurous Carly Cooper that she used to be.
On this latest quest, Carly discovers a few home truths and has to decide If her marriage is worth saving or is there a new happy-ever-after out there, just waiting for her…

My Thoughts:

I absolutely loved Carly’s adventures in ‘What If?’ set 20 years prior to this follow on. It was great to step back in time to an age when computers and the internet were not so readily available. It was a simpler time, and it really allowed Carly’s story to play centre stage. So, I was excited that the author was bringing out a follow-on and we were going to see what Carly and her motley crew were up to 20 years later.
I have mixed emotions after reading the book, on the one hand, I really enjoyed it, and I’m glad we got more of Val who has been seen in lots of Shari Low’s other books. The amusement level of this book was off the scale; I wish I could be as witty as these characters. However, on the other hand, I wished we’d left Carly with her happy ever after and not destroyed that bubble. I know that’s not what life is like, there are ups and downs in reality, but when I enter these worlds, it’s to read about the happy endings and the forevers of couples dancing off into the sunset. To suddenly have the end of a book I enjoyed so much torn up and to effectively start again was discombobulating. I think it was even more so as I’d only read the first book a few weeks ago so it was all fresh in my mind and I still had the happy glow from the perfectness of Carly’s story.
We saw Carly happily married to her childhood sweetheart, Mark. However, now they have split, and she is reevaluating her life that has become one big plod fest! Wacky antics are afoot when Carly, Val and the girls head off to LA to visit Sam one of her exes and get some long needed Vitamin D. Lots of ups, downs, and drama make for a fun read.
I can’t say the book was as gripping as the first as Carly’s attitude, which was very downtrodden and depressed made me read the book at the same pace she moved. Overall, I’m glad I read the book even if it was just to see Val a little more, but I still think it would have been better off left at the end of ‘What If?’

Buy Now on Amazon