#25. Girl from the South: Joanna Trollope

I love Joanna Trollope, but I haven't read one of her books for years - not since Marrying the Mistress and Other People's Children. I love her style of writing, especially because the characters she creates and the scenarios she places them in are so real, and yet still light-hearted and engaging enough to ensure that you don't feel depressed at the unrelenting reality of it.
Girl from the South straddles London and Charleston, South Carolina to examine thirty-something angst - finding love, finding the right job, working out where you fit in, and so on. There are men who can't commit, girls who can't work out whether they want to be married mothers or to go a completely different way, and all are feeling like time is ticking - that things should be getting serious. Of course, my favourite character is Tilly, the features editor (there I go with the writers again!), who can't get her boyfriend Henry to marry her and instead ends up in an unsuitable relationship with unsuitable William who has been in love with her forever.
It should be predictable and irritating - but it's not. And that's the joy of Joanna Trollope.