Book Review... Welcome to My World - Miranda Dickinson

Welcome to My World - Miranda Dickinson
Avon Books, 2010
ISBN: 9781847561664












My rating

From the back cover:

"A travel agent who longs to travel. 
An intrepid explorer who just wants to find a place to call home. 
And a Big Idea that changes everything! 
Close your eyes and imagine the world is your oyster! And now imagine never seeing it. Welcome to Harriet Langton's world. All her life she's dreamt of travelling the globe - fate always got in the way. Working as a travel agent, the closest Harri comes to her dream destination of Venice is booking the trip for someone else. But everything changes when travel fanatic Alex drops in. 
With her boyfriend Rob tied up with work, Harri is persuaded to help Alex in his quest for love. But in her attempts to help, Harri soon discovers that she's alienating those around her. 
Desperate to leave her life behind, will her dreams finally come true? Or will Harri's leap of faith be her biggest mistake yet? 
A gorgeous love story for fans of Sophie Kinsella and Jill Mansell"

At times I really enjoyed this book, but overall my feeling towards this book is one of frustration.

The author does a good job of making her heroine both likeable and unlikable, I especially liked that the author delved into the theme of loneliness.

But there is a lot about this book that is frown-inducing; It was quite clear, even though it wasn't revealed until nearly the end, that the heroine's boyfriend was cheating - I felt this made the heroine out to be very stupid, and also there was never really any explanation as to why he did it, I felt there wasn't enough 'closure' on that part. The hero (and I use that term lightly) was an idiot, and he came off as very patronising towards the heroine. There is a part in the book where the heroine overhears him telling one of his friends that he only hangs out with her as he pities her - his response is that he only said that to get his friend off his back but I couldn't buy this, the author didn't really make him believable, or redeemable, after that. And the evil-girlfriend character and her antics just didn't make sense.

I felt there were a lot of good elements that weren't really used to their full potential.

The narrative was very slow, it dragged in places and many times I almost gave up reading. However the author hooked me in buy having the story begin in the present with the heroine hiding out in a toilet cubicle and us, the reader, not knowing why only that something bad has happened - and the rest of the book is all the events leading up to that moment.

Not a bad book just, I don't know, not quite there.

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