A slow burn, I couldn’t get into. Maybe it got better, but I DNF. I was interested in reading it after seeing other reviews. Maybe it helps to be invested in the series and the prior stories.

Thank you NetGalley & Penguin Random House Canada for sending this book for review consideration.

I enjoyed every paragraph of Keyes most recent book Again, Rachel. Therefore, I was thrilled to be given early access to this title by the publisher.

This is a story about Anna who is one of Rachel’s sisters. (The clan appears in a number of titles including an earlier book featuring Anna.) As the story opens, Anna has been a high achiever with her New York job and income. However with Covid, the end of a relationship and more, it has all become way too much for her. So she heads back to Ireland.

Not sure what she will do there, Anna is contacted on behalf of a friend who needs her help with a big real estate project. Anna hopes that her prior work experiences will be transferable. Will they? One complication is that an old love of Anna’s is also working on this development. Will sparks fly? Watch what happens in this long but enjoyable story that also touches on some issues including menopause.

What I liked about this book:

The characters, the setting, the ability to sink right in, the humor, the warmth-so much to recommend in these pages.

Fans of Keyes and those who like women’s fiction, give this one a look. Perfect for a summer day read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada-Doubleday Canada for this title. All opinions are my own.

This book is book 7 in a series based around the Walsh family who live in Ireland — I didn’t know this when I received the book — but the promise sounded interesting and funny — this author has gotten a lot of praise from many and I was excited to try one of her novels . As this is part of a series — I really think those who have read more of the books would appreciate and connect with main character Anna Walsh and her family dynamics better knowing more of their backstories. This book was based around Anna Walsh who leaves her life in New York City and moves back to Ireland during the pandemic to start fresh . I must admit I couldn’t get invested in the characters and Anna’s current / future outcome — the parts I enjoyed the most were about her past who she got to be at this point which made me realize maybe I would get more from this book if I went back and read “Anybody Out There “ based on Anna past to have a better understanding of how she ended up the way she is 15 years later . Due to all aforementioned I have to admit, and my apologies that I gave up (DNF) at 50% through the story cause I felt like I was missing a bigger connections, but the writing seems good to me , and it’s full of dark humor. I recommend this book to people who know this series and enjoy dark humor . I will have to try another book by this author as she comes so highly recommended that I feel it’s such a shame I couldn’t invest or connect — 3/5 as I enjoyed Anna’s back story sections and the dark humor that hit the right hot spot for me.


Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada | Doubleday Canada for this ARC. This is my honest review !

Once again, another wonderful book by Marian Keyes! I couldn’t put it down! I was so excited to get an advanced read of one of my favorite authors! Thanks to NetGalley!

Dual time lime - present day Anna Walsh has decided to leave her successful pr job in NY to return to Ireland.
To help family, she becomes involved in the pr campaign for a coastal retreat. Past relationships and family
will be major influences.
I had not read any of the other books about the Walsh family and there were many characters to keep track of.
#MyFavouriteMistake #Doubleday #NetGalley

My Favorite Mistake was a unique spin on a classic missed opportunity narrative. Woman do become more interesting as they travel through life. Anna was preserved through tragedies, moving to another continent, living during a pandemic and the roller coaster ride of relationships. How refreshing to have a 40ish year old woman as the heroine! Lovely cast of characters helped shape her story.

“I’m not the person I was but I’ve no clue who I’m going to be.”

My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes is the ultimate comfort novel. Anna Walsh seems to have her life perfectly on track in NY – a great PR job for a beauty company, a fabulous life partner, her own apartment. But when Covid strikes and she is stuck indoors with him nonstop, Anna experiences a midlife crisis of sorts. Without any plans, she breaks up with him, rents out her apartment, and moves to Ireland to be with her family. After months of being overqualified for new PR positions, she is finally given a chance with a friend’s company that is opening a new resort in Maumtully, but some of the locals are causing a scene about the new property. This is easy for Anna – she will go in, figure out the problem, smooth things over, and move on. Unfortunately, the finance and project decisions are going through Narky Joey – a man from her past. Is Anna able to work alongside him, get the resort back on track, and figure out who she is meant to be?

I absolutely LOVE Keyes. I read Sushi for Beginners when I was in high school (when it was released!) and have been a fan ever since. While her books are always a tad too long with a lot of characters, once you get settled in you know it will be a great read.

Even though this is technically book seven in the Walsh Family Series, they are all stand-alone novels, and you don’t have to read the priors to get enough background information and fall in love with this over-the-top fam!

Honestly, I was confused over the title – Anna made numerous mistakes as we all do, but she learned and grew from her past. I was unsure which mistake was Anna’s favourite, or if it was not from her past but something she was currently in the process of making.

Keyes is brilliant at tying in relevant storylines, with crazy family dynamics, laugh-out-loud (and eyeroll) scenes, real life issues, small-town drama, love, and sabotage. Anna is an easy to like character that you will understand (though I wasn’t a huge fan of Jacqui), and I will continue to recommend Keyes to all of my girlfriends. However, this wasn’t “my favourite” by Keyes and was probably 200 pages longer than it needed to be, and therefore I am giving it 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for this arc; all opinions are my own!

“And there it was: life gives, life removes, life shifts things sideways. Life reshapes, repurposes, files things away. Life heals, reveals, uncovers, all in its own sweet time. If I could just lean into the journey, I’d be okay.”

Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC! I enjoyed the latest Walsh sisters’ adventure. There were times I wanted to throttle Anna Walsh but that’s true of all of us… we’re all imperfect. It was so nice to read a book about a woman my own age. By this time we’ve lived many lives and been many different versions of ourselves and Anna is no different. Keyes writing immediately transported me to a quaint Irish seaside town and a lovable cast of returning and new characters. This was everything I wanted from a small-town romance.

I *love* that Marian Keyes is returning to the Walsh family and continuing the stories of our favorite family!

This novel is catching up with Anna and takes place in time after Again, Rachel.

Anna's original book, Anybody Out There, is my favorite of the 5 so I was elated to see she got a new book.

While some of My Favourite Mistake revisits beats from AOT, I welcomed it since it's been so long since I read the book that I forgot most of what happened beyond the highlights (which is a failing of my own, not Ms. Keyes).

This novel is a long one but a good one. While I didn't love it as much as Again, Rachel or the first of Anna's books, it was a solid 4 for me. I loved the whole story, especially the small Irish village coziness of it all. It really made me want to visit this town and feel like I could sit down at the pub with them.

Read this if you've enjoyed the Walsh Family, the newest addition will delight you as well!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the eARC copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

My Favorite Mistake is a novel of the Walsh family, this time focusing on Anna. At the start, she is in NYC and feeling trapped in her relationship and job and quite literally in her boyfriend’s apartment during the pandemic (though this is not a pandemic novel). We follow her as she makes decisions to move forward a bit differently while gradually collecting her backstory. The whole novel is terrific but shines particularly brightly when the whole Walsh clan is together, as they radiate warmth, zaniness, and gentle teasing. And you don’t have to read the Walsh family books in order—you can really dive in anywhere. This one is a fantastic addition to the series and I loved every minute of it.

I liked this, I didn't love it. Pretty wordy, no huge surprises, but I certainly can see the appeal for many. I'd probably read more from the author, as I LOL'ed several times :)

I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC of this novel.

Irish novelist Marion Keyes is inimitable in the ‘warmth and wit’ category of rom-coms, especially those set in madcap Irish families. Her latest, the 7th in the Walsh family series, is great fun, even though a large part of the main character’s story follows her never really complete recovery from the accident that killed her young husband, leaving her physically and emotionally torn.

Anna Walsh first ‘escaped’ Ireland, though not without misgivings, in her late teens. With four outspoken sisters, a mother even more so, and a quiet but very anxious father, she lived a peripatetic life for a few years, travelling with her boyfriend and doing odd jobs here and there. In her early 20s, she returned home alone and set herself to finding real work and making an adult life. With her childhood friend Jacqui, whose ambition was to work in the best hotel in New York, they set out to conquer. She landed a PR job with a major international cosmetics company. She met Aiden, a gently supportive soul mate. They lived a wonderful life as young professionals in creative fields. And then, barely a year into their marriage, Aiden was killed in a car accident. Anna was left with painful injuries, a scarred face, and the profound depression of grief. Pushing on, she kept working, now also taking care of Jacqui and her new baby Trea, born of her chaotic relationship with another Irish ex-pat, Joey. Joey was intensely charismatic and cast his spell over every woman he met. Anna was the only one who had held out, making her a legend in their circle.

This back story, crucial to what unfolds here, is woven in and out of the present-day plot. It starts with Anna, having come to terms with losing Aiden, now living with Angelo, another soulful ‘feather-stroker’ like Aiden. Covid has paralyzed New York and the two are, like everyone who lived it, at first delighted with isolation and work-from-home, then increasingly frustrated by it and with each other. They part amicably. Anna is also sick of the dog-eat-dog stakes of her job and wants to go back to Ireland and her crazy but sustaining family. Those who have read the previous books will once again be alternately charmed, touched and appalled by the Walsh’s, a comedy show in and of themselves.

Here’s where the real story happens. At loose ends, unemployed, suffering perimenopause torments, alternatively worried over and nagged by her family for her current ‘loser’ status (no man, no job, no ambition, getting old), she takes up an offer to do a ‘mending fences’ PR job for some friends whose resort project has the locals up in arms.

And who should be in charge of this massive project but Joey, who had preceded her back to Ireland? After his relationship with Jacqui definitively blew up, he set up an investment brokerage, married an Irish woman, and had three boys with her. But, as he told it, he was unable to be the ‘bad boy but not bad boy’ she wanted. Because Anna only knew him as a fully turned-out bad boy, she has a hard time reconciling her memories of a heavy-drinking, woman-using, rock-star type with what he now seems to be: a middle-aged, respectable, hard-working, fabulously successful businessman and devoted father.

There are two mysteries driving the story after Anna and Joey reunite for their joint mission. The obvious one is that they need to find out why the locals are seemingly against the project and who defaced property with paint and damaged construction vehicles. With Anna in the lead gently coaxing, reassuring, and making amends, they fulfil their mandate, though not without some hilarious twists. The second mystery involves the two of them and Jacqui, former best friend of Anna and former girlfriend of Joey. What happened between the two women? How is Joey involved?

The author made me laugh, hard, with every other paragraph, and sometimes more often. She has a very skilful way with dialogue and characterization. All the personalities who play a part, large or small, are uproariously funny, or gently funny, or can at least offer up a few witty lines. The sad stories intermingling with the comedy just remind us that life’s mistakes and misfortunes come and go, and eventually we can laugh again.

Yes! “Anybody Out There” was my first Marian Keyes book, and after reading it, I became obsessed with the Walsh family saga. I devoured each Walsh sister’s story with pure hunger and excitement, satisfying my cravings for dramedy (though I loved Rachel’s story and conclusion a bit more).

Anna Walsh, the kindest and most eccentric of the Walsh sisters, holds a special place in my heart. After being introduced to her as emotionally and physically wrecked following the incident with her husband Aiden, I always wondered how her life would evolve and if she would get a second chance at everything. When I found out Keyes was bringing her back to conclude or offer closure to her story, I jumped at the chance without even reading the blurb. Give me a Walsh family book, and leave me alone for two days while I devour the entire story in one sitting until I can’t feel my legs and arms.

In this new novel, Anna appears to have built a perfect New Yorker life: a great PR job at a top beauty company, a good boyfriend, and a fancy house. However, like many of us questioning our life choices during COVID, she realizes her life is heading in a direction she’s not satisfied with. She’s unhappy with her career choices, and her relationship with Angelo seems to be over, prompting her to seek a fresh start. This pushes her to move back to her hometown in Ireland, where she initially struggles to find a proper job. Her friends eventually offer her a part-time position, leading her to settle in a small town and connect with its vivid and eccentric residents—so different from the lonely, hyper-independent life in New York where nobody pries or cares about your business. Another significant change comes with a coworker, Joey, with whom she shares a complicated past. Does this mean a second chance at love or a new, but still complicated, friendship? Join Anna’s journey to discover more about her new life after COVID-induced changes and her pre-menopausal cycle, which affects her emotional state as she reflects on her past mistakes.

I have always adored Marian Keyes’ dark humor, heartfelt, and original writing style, making her one of my auto-approved authors. Even though this book is a slow burn, it offers a realistic journey, allowing readers to step into Anna’s shoes and state of mind, and introduces a bunch of very interesting and entertaining characters. It’s totally worth your time! Just relax and set another appointment to spend more time with the Walsh clan. This journey is too good to skip!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada/Doubleday Canada for sharing this heartfelt journey’s digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I have been an avid fan of Marian Keyes since I found her my senior year of college, plucking Last Chance Saloon from a local bookshop shelf, excited to read what I wanted to since school was winding down. Her characters are always rich with depth, wit, and charm; this tale following Anna is no different. My Favourite Mistake is a must-read if you've followed the Walsh family from the beginning, or just looking for a story that provides an introspective look at what it's like to love and be loved through the many stages of life. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the chance to read this beautiful ARC!

Thanks Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the advanced reader's copy of this publication.
I am fan of every Marian Keyes books in the past but this one just didn't strike me from the first chapter maybe it was me or the timing was not perfect. It was a pass for me this time.

This book was not for me, I did not finish it. It was a waste of time.
Mmmmm mmmmm.
EeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeD

Already, Yay! I love Marian Keyes… ESPECIALLY her stories about the Walsh sisters… and ESPECIALLY Anna. So I was incredibly thrilled to receive an Advanced Reader Copy of her newest novel, My Favorite Mistake. There’s nothing like Marian Keyes for instant comfort and humor.

In this one, Anna is having a bit of a COVID-induced midlife crisis. She realizes that her relationship with the lovely Angelo is essentially over, and her fantastic career is no longer fulfilling, so she decides to leave her life in New York and move back to Ireland to be closer to her family, where she struggles to find work.

Anna gets a PR job with some friends in a small town who are trying to open a luxury resort, much to the consternation of the town. Most of the story is Anna caught up in the life of the small town and its many ‘characters’. Complicating everything though is the reemergence of her first love Joey in her life.

Even though I found the book a bit slow in parts, I’m glad I read it and I found it a satisfying read overall. It shows once again that Marian Keyes is an expert at blending family drama with humor
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read early.

I always love Marian Keyes books. This one -- about an older version of one the Walsh girls (yes, they grow older, too) -- was just as fun, upbeat, and how to start over in life really successfully.

We all make mistakes. Some are small but others are big ones. Maybe you can relate to some of the mistakes in the book. I don't think of Joey has a mistake rather it is an untimely connection. Is he her missed love? Along the path of discovery there are opportunities to correct past mistakes. Would you notice if one of your mistakes appeared and you had the chance to make a different choice? An interesting book. The cast of characters are fun with interconnections. Plenty to make the book an enjoyable read.

I was absolutely delighted to receive an early copy of this book from NetGalley and Penguin Random House! Marian Keyes is a long-time favorite author of mine, and stories about The Walsh sisters are my comfort books. So my rating and review are a bit biased since I grew up alongside these characters.

This book in particular was a wonderful winding look at a woman’s history of love and friendship. Keyes elegantly showed how people fade in and out of our lives as we get older. She also showed that it’s possible to move forward and change our minds. We don’t have to be the same. Once we let go of certain expectations for ourselves, we can find new ways of being happy. “That’s the thing about humans: we can’t know until we know.”

If you read the original Anna book “anyone out there?”, you’ll know that she faced a deeply tragic loss after marrying her first husband. This book shows her in a different junction - how she handles perimenopause and the post-pandemic-life crisis.

It was long. There are A LOT of characters to try and remember.
But if you show up for the long ride, you’ll be rewarded.