*I received a free ARC of this novel, with thanks to the author, Harper Collins UK and NetGalley. The decision to review and my opinions are my own.*
Blurb: Number One bestselling author Gill Sims is back with her eagerly awaited fourth and final Why Mummy novel.
I just wanted them to stop wittering at me, eat vegetables without complaining, let me go to the loo in peace and learn to make a decent gin and tonic.
It genuinely never occurred to me when they were little that this would ever end – an eternity of Teletubbies and Duplo and In The Night Bastarding Garden and screaming, never an end in sight. But now there is. And despite the busybody old women who used to pop up whenever I was having a bad day and tell me I would miss these days when they were over, I don’t miss those days at all.
I have literally never stood wistfully in the supermarket and thought ‘Oh, how I wish someone was trailing behind me constantly whining ‘Mummy, can I have, Mummy can I have?’ while another precious moppet tries to climb out the trolley so they land on their head and we end up in A&E.
Again.
Mummy has been a wife and mother for so long that she’s a little bit lost. And despite her best efforts, her precious moppets still don’t know the location of the laundry basket, the difference between being bored and being hungry, or that saying ‘I can’t find it Mummy’ is not the same as actually looking for it.
Amidst the chaos of A-Levels and driving tests, she’s doing her best to keep her family afloat, even if everybody is set on drifting off in different directions, and that one of those directions is to make yet another bloody snack. She’s feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated, and the only thing that Mummy knows for sure is that the bigger the kids, the bigger the drink.
Fans of Gill Sims’ Why Mummy… series, or her highly successful Peter and Jane blog, will be familiar with the format by now, as this is Ellen’s fourth and final adventure in the world of adulting (and parenting).
Peter and Jane are now hulking teenagers, obsessed with online gaming and driving lessons, and Ellen finally has a bit of time and space to assess her life and think about her future identity once the children finally fly the nest. Uh oh!
Yes, now that the #parentingfail days are more of a memory, Ellen is looking at her personal and professional life and worrying about all of it indiscriminately. Almost ex-husband, Simon, suddenly seems to want to be involved more, there are ominous rumours of a coming merger at work, and a hot neighbour has moved in next door… but could he be a serial killer? Or missing a willy? Because some things never change, and Ellen is still prone to wild forays into her very vivid imagination at inopportune moments!
Gill Sims captured the highs and lows of parenting small children in a light, funny and eminently relatable way, and now she does the same for parenting nearly-adults and considering becoming an adult yourself. The result is a lovely, feelgood romcom that will have you alternately aawwwww-ing and giggling.
I didn’t think I could bear for this series to ever end, but Sims has achieved the impossible in bringing Ellen’s adventures to a satisfying conclusion, leaving the reader feeling replete with warm fuzzy feelings. Until one’s own Moppets notice and ruin it, of course!
I nibbled my bun and sipped my tea as the hour slowly passed. Seventeen years ago, it didn’t seem possible that I’d be sitting and waiting to hear if Jane had passed her driving test. What was I doing seventeen years ago? Apart from feeling old and thinking I was already a dried-up husk because I was the ancient and decrepit age of thirty-one, which now, with hindsight, seems utterly ridiculous. I’m forty-eight and look upon women of thirty-one as mere babies! They are but ingénues, so hopeful and young, with not the slightest idea of how much cronedom lies ahead of them, or just how much they have yet to dry up. They’re all hash-tagging madly on Instagram about things I don’t understand like ‘bulletproof coffee’ and kimchi and starting podcasts. Anyway. Seventeen years ago. Baby Music. I used to go to Baby Music on Friday mornings. Every Friday morning, sitting in a circle on a hard, cold church-hall floor, attempting to pin a furious and writhing Jane on my lap while clapping along with the other smiley-happy mummies to an irritating song about an old brass wagon.
– Gill Sims, Why Mummy’s Sloshed
You can find more from Gill Sims at her blog here or follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Why Mummy’s Sloshed releases on 15th October 2020, but is available to pre-order on Amazon right now!
Check here for my reviews of Gill Sims’ previous books in this series: Why Mummy Drinks, Why Mummy Swears and Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****.
Bookshine And Readbows 