‘The Forever Girl’ by Alexander McCall Smith

Although I am an avid McCall Smith fan and have so far enjoyed everything he has written, I am sad to say that this one fell flat. It was a disappointing read even though it got off to a good start. You’d think a romantic story set in the Cayman Islands could sizzle and pop, but instead it seemed to get bogged down with the meaning of love. I usually like the author’s exploration of ideas in his novels, but in this one there wasn’t enough happening to sustain the philosophical interludes. There were a couple of hilarious scenes at the beginning and I thought I was in for a good read, but it was not to be. Nothing much happens besides Clover travelling far and wide to satisfy her obsession with James and it got to be downright boring. There were too many times when I was expecting something interesting to happen and it just didn’t, and everything got neatly tied up in the end without any development of characters or proper conflict resolution to back it up.