Review: My Best Friend's Girl by Dorothy Koomson

Last word first: Heartbreaking and sweet, if a little predictable in some ways. Recommended reading.

Synopsis: Kamryn and Adele were best friends for years, right up to the day Kamryn found out Adele had slept with Kamryn's fiance. Broken-hearted, Kamryn ditches her friend, her fiance and her former life and does her best to forget. And she thinks she's succeeded, when Adele's dying request for Kamryn to adopt her daughter brings it all back to the surface. Tegan isn't just Adele's daughter... she's also the daughter of Kamryn's former fiance, though he is unaware of it.

My thoughts: There are two things that just make me fall apart - dying mothers and abused children. (That's actually a lie. There are many things in books I find tough to deal with, but those are biggies.) This book serves up both within the first 80 pages.

You'll have guessed already what happens, so I don't really feel like I'm giving you a spoiler when I say that Kamryn (Ryn) decides to adopt Tegan, Adele's daughter. Adele passes away fairly early in the story, though her presence continues to be felt throughout. Ryn has been adamant that she never wants children, so it's both funny and sweet to watch her trying to be mummy to a heartbroken five year old.

Precocious Tegan adds to the fledgling family by adopting Ryn's boss, Luke. The one problem is that Luke really doesn't like Kamryn very much. And in order to finalize the adoption process, Kamryn has to contact Tegan's biological father. Also known as Nate, the man who broke her heart that she hasn't seen since.

I want to emphasize that while there is definitely a strong romance component to this book, the story is more about the relationship between Ryn and Tegan. And to a lesser extent, about Kamryn coming to terms with herself and her past. The story didn't have a whole lot of surprises (though I didn't expect it to end exactly the way it did), but it was highly enjoyable.

About Dorothy Koomson: She says, "I wrote my first novel called There's A Thin Line Between Love And Hate when I was 13. I used to write a chapter every night then pass it around to my fellow convent school pupils every morning, and they seemed to love it. " That's from the bio on her website. There's more info about her there, along with the first chapter of My Best Friend's Girl and all her other novels!

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