It's Valentine's Day and Siobhan, Miranda and Jane all have dates. Unfortunately, they're all stood up. By the same man. Fortunately, he's got a good excuse.
In my effort to get back into listening to audiobooks I turned to Beth O'Leary as I knew from previous books that her stories are filled with engaging characters and plots that seem predictable but have twists that keep you guessing. The No-Show filled each of these criteria.
At the beginning, we meet three very different women. Siobhan is a life coach, completely focused on her career and has complete control of her relationship. Miranda is a tree surgeon, trying to cement her place in a male-dominated profession. Jane works in a charity shop, an introvert, she keeps to herself and is reluctant to discuss her past.
On Valentine's Day, each woman has a date, with the same man, Joseph Carter. To make matters worse, they are each stood up. At this point, I was so angry for each of the women. Putting their feelings on display, on such a monumental day, only to be stood up, with no contact from Joseph, had me spitting fire on their behalf. And then gradually, we get to meet Joseph Carter and he's just so likeable. He's dealing with a lot, working full-time and caring for his mother who has dementia. I found my loathing and hatred of Joseph quickly disappearing and being replaced by sympathy. I still couldn't get my head around the fact that he was stringing along three women though.
Siobhan is happy enough with seeing Joseph once a month, she has her career to focus on and is still licking her wounds after the end of a previous relationship. While Miranda is waiting around for Joseph she's blind to the possibility of romance closer to home. Jane is the real enigma among the three women. She's obviously hiding a secret and seems to be punishing herself for something that happened in her past. She's determined not to get close to anyone but her colleagues gradually worm their way into her life.
My emotions swung from loathing to sympathy, and back to dislike as the story progressed. I'll even admit to feeling a little bored as the plot seemed to be going nowhere. And then the twist I certainly wasn't expecting, a twist that left me shocked and close to tears. Everything in the story finally fell into place and I immediately wanted to go back to the beginning and listen again.
While it was nice to have different narrators I don't feel that a different one for each female character was really necessary and didn't add anything to the audiobook. I do wonder if this works better in print as I feel it would be easier to keep track of each character, however, I thoroughly enjoyed listening along.
Author Details
Beth O’Leary is a Sunday Times bestselling author whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. Her debut, The Flatshare, sold over a million copies and is now a major TV series. Her subsequent novels, The Switch, The Road Trip, The No-Show and The Wake-Up Call, were all instant bestsellers. Beth writes her books in the Hampshire countryside with a very badly behaved Golden Retriever for company. If she’s not at her desk, you’ll usually find her curled up somewhere with a book, a cup of tea and several woolly jumpers (whatever the weather).
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