I struggled to get through this one, but I know there are many readers out there who would pick this up and absolutely love it.

After being involved in a bank robbery, Martha takes stock of her life. Even before she was caught up in the drama that resulted in a shooting, no one was exactly calling her haphazard life a success. Least of all Martha herself.

Cillian is the police officer tasked with interviewing the witnesses. Cillian was once the man that Martha thought would be “the one”. Both Cillian and Martha had come to realize long ago that even the strongest relationship can’t always be enough when one of you is serving another master – alcohol.

Tobias lies in a coma, his mind replaying his past life on a loop that begins to filter in what is going on around him in the hospital. He has had a long and interesting life – and he has no wish to let it go.

Roman, a Polish teenager and recent immigrant, was barely keeping his head above water in his new country. Now he is in the worst trouble of his short life.

Roman’s mother, Rosa is at her employer’s side. Tobias was very good to her and she cannot believe her life has come to this point. Her son is a criminal and Tobias is fading fast.

There’s a lot going in this book with the back narrative of Tobias during the war years, the shared past of Cillian and Martha, the struggles of young Roman and the present day robbery aftermath. Any one of these plotlines could serve as separate novels. Being put together in one work however, the subplots all seemed combative and fighting for space. In particular, the historical narrative of Tobias has a different style to the more recent scenes set in Ireland; there was much here that could be drawn and sculpted into a solid standalone work.

Author Ciara Geraghty has written a book filled with culturally diverse characters who have all come to be in the same part of Ireland at the same time. It feels a little “over stuffed” in its efforts to cover all identity bases. Despite the depth of their troubles it was also a little difficult finding someone to identify and care too much about in THIS IS NOW. The character of the police officer, Cillian, is perhaps the most realistically drawn. With his compassionate and accepting nature (really to his own detriment); he is also the most positive when the other players all have rather bleak outlooks.

Sometimes you can just feel like reading a drama novel where not everyone ends up in a happy place and the author includes in her novel just enough light comedy, mostly around Martha and her drinking, to lift the novel out of the gloom when it needs to see some light. There are some good take home messages from THIS IS NOW about rising above, pushing through adversity and finding an acceptable level of happiness that you can live with.