Book Review: The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew by Cristina Odone

Harriet Carew is struggling to juggle all of her commitments, be it financial, family or job and its stressing her out. Her and her husband Guy are determined to send their boys to the local private school, but are finding it hard to pay the fees. Consequently, Harriet finds herself at work more to earn some pennies while hubby Guy is being wooed by BBC to turn his books into TV documentaries.

But Harriet's past comes back to surprise her in the form of her ex-boyfriend James who's now a rather wealthy businessman. Is Harriet going to be attracted by what could have been, or will she stay with financially struggling Guy and their family?

According to the first couple of pages, Cristina Odone originally wrote the character of Harriet Carew for the Daily Telegraph newspaper in a series of columns called "Posh and Poor". The column was so well received that she was commissioned to write a book about Harriet, and this is the result. Now, I've never read either the Telegraph or Odone's column so I didn't know what to expect from either thing, but I presumed it must be quite good for a book to have come out of it. I therefore looked forward to good characters and a good writing style, and while I was satisfied on one account, the other sadly left me cold and somewhat annoyed by the time I finished my book.

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