Title: The Brightest Star in the SkyAuthor: Marian Keyes
Published: 2009
Publisher: Penguin UK
Pages: 614
Source: Own copy
Genres: Contemporary Fiction / Chick Lit
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There's this thing that happens when you get pregnant where all of a sudden your energy levels decide to leave you to go on holiday and your concentration seems to have hitched a ride in the suitcase. This results in the need to re-evaluate your reading list and start choosing titles that require, well how do I put this diplomatically, a little less brain power.
As such I picked up The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes. I love Keyes. Her books tend to have the best mix of low key chick-lit writing with themes that have a bit of substance thrown in for good measure. My favourite so far has been Anybody Out There and I would recommend it to anyone.
The Brightest Star in the Sky centers around a 'being' of some kind (explained later in the book) that comes down to 66 Star Street in Dublin and watches the residences in the building's 4 apartments. The book quickly jumps between the characters lives slowly interweaving the stories as time goes on. The chapters are quick enough and the characters interesting enough to keep the pages turning and I really enjoyed reading as the various plots unfolded. There was a lot of mystery surrounding the couple in the bottom flat but I did guess the mystery long before it was revealed within the pages.
I must admit I didn't enjoy the ending, things just didn't quite seem to round up in an interesting enough way and the 'being' stuff was a bit too much out of reality for me to buy into it. This meant that unfortunately the whole book was a bit more disappointing in the end even though I enjoyed the middle part so much.
Ultimately if you haven't read a Marian Keyes before I certainly wouldn't recommend starting with this one and there are a lot better books out there to read but if you're after an easy to read popular character fiction it's still worth the time.
