We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes

 

Amy     

Lynnie

contemporary fiction

 

Lila lives in a historic home which requires upkeep she cannot afford, her husband left her for another one of the school mums (who is now pregnant) right after Lila’s book about her amazing marriage was published, and then her beloved mother was killed in an accident. She’s had a rough year already when her long lost father arrives and makes matters worse. She’s got a looming deadline for her next book, she’s single parenting, she hasn’t had intimacy in three years, and Lila is at the end of her wits.

 

Amy's Review

Yes, you know if it’s Jojo Moyes, everything will work out in the end. But things keep going wrong and Lila reaches an extreme stress crescendo before it does. She’s not the easiest character to care about. Granted, she’s been dealing with A LOT. But she also agrees to take on a new school responsibility when she, clearly, cannot take on anything else. This made me think less of Lila right off the bat—I mean, children’s expectations are involved. And then she continued to act stupidly frequently and was too slow to realize that some of her actions would harm others. So I found her frustrating and exhausting even while sympathetic to her situation.

However, despite my annoyance with the protagonist, I never felt the story got boring. Honestly, it was kind of like a mild soap opera. But mostly it was watching one woman’s life become a train wreck. It definitely wasn’t Moyes’ best novel.

I did learn a new British term which I will likely employ in my own speech henceforth: shambolic. It means “chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged”. I love it!

Unimportantly, I don’t recall that the title We All Live Here was ever spoken or acknowledged by any of the characters yet the statement was true for a time.

The narrator of the audiobook was Jenna Coleman. She was a good voice actor with a small vocal repertoire. There wasn’t enough distinction at times to be able to discern which character was speaking during dialogues. I’ll give her a B+.

 

Lynnie's Review

 

This review pains me. I love Jojo Moyes' writing, but We All Live Here was a slog for me. I've said before that my enjoyment of books strongly correlates to how I feel about the main characters and the truth is, I just did not like Lila. Honestly, I didn't like most of the characters in this book - with a couple notable exceptions.

I get it, Lila has had a tough time of things lately. A series of blows has left her feeling less than her best self and we are treated to every detail of her misery. I found Lila exhausting, she has no resiliency to speak of and enough self-pity to depress an entire community. She's not grateful to anyone for the help or attention they do give her, she's kind of crappy to her kids, and while she is a published author, she generally does nothing with her days and then complains about her next book not going anywhere and her lack of funds.

There were some great opportunities to discuss mental health and how help is available, but with the exception of one character - the only one who seems to have their act together - Lila's mental well-being doesn't really get addressed in any sort of meaningful way.

Instead, the book is just slow and sad and while there is the inevitable Moyes happy ending, by the time we got there I didn't really care. The truth is, if this hadn't been written by Moyes, I would have stopped reading about 20% in. This is the rare case where I give the caveat that if you enjoyed Moyes' previous books, you may not love this one.