The Worst Idea Ever by Jane Fallon - Book Review

Introducing Jane Fallon's latest book that came out last year. I was hooked on this book from the blurb, and it is such a unique idea. 

The novel revolves around best friends Georgia and Lydia, where the pair met at university and have even lived with one another. Now, they are in their mid-forties. However, their lives are completely different from each other. Georgia is a successful illustrator for a children’s book, is happily married and has twins who have gone to university. Whereas Lydia envies the life of her best friend, sure, she’s happy for Georgia’s success but wishes that she too could be a successful illustrator and has a husband and children. 

Lydia creates an Etsy account for people to buy her drawings, and after complaining to Georgia about it all, a drunk Georgia creates a fake Twitter account called, Patricia, to help boost Lydia’s confidence and give her moral support. But this all backfires when Lydia tells ‘Patricia’ something that is happening in Georgia’s life and doesn’t know if she should tell Georgia about it. 

I really did enjoy this book, it kept me on my toes and I could not put the book down. SPOILER ALERT, the secret that Lydia tells Patricia is actually a lie, and Lydia faked it for a reason I will not say. What is nice is that at the end of the book, SPOILER, the two do not stay as friends. Although this is sad as they’ve been best friends for over twenty years since university, it does show how realistic some friendships are. We all expect to stay friends with some people forever, but sometimes, they can be toxic and the best thing to do is to split up – something I am happy about Jane Fallon doing. 

I also liked how the side characters had their own stories and were their own characters and not just in the book to support Georgia and Lydia. 

Even though I did really enjoy this, there are some reasons why I was not in love with this book. For starters, as you know, Lydia’s life is completely different to Georgia’s life, not happy with where her career is (that’s fine), but she is also single and has no children (the horror! JKS). There is nothing wrong if you are yearning to be in a relationship and have children, yet, making it seem like if you do not have those things when you are middle-aged is a bad thing, is something that no one should feel down about. Everyone is living their life in their own way, and women are constantly told how their life should be and if it’s not, there is something wrong with them — when there isn’t. 

On top of that, we learn that Lydia is lying and we also learn why. At the start, I thought I knew why the jealousy of Georgia having the life she wanted got too much to her, but when the truth came out, it was quite a cliche. Now, carry on reading if you want as I will now explain what she lied about and why. SPOILER. Lydia finds out quite quickly that Georgia created this fake account, and was frustrated and didn’t enjoy feeling her best friend pitting her, so, she lies to ‘Praticia’ stating Georgia’s husband, Nick, was cheating on her. 

Now, I really love how the reason Lydia did that was that she hated her friend doing this and wanted one element of her friend's life to be affected in a bad way. But, nearing the end of the novel, we learn that the reason she did all of this is because… you guessed it… she liked Nick and hoped maybe he would end up seeing her in a different light and end up with her. It’s a cliche. And I hated that this was written as it seems like women always do something for men and that women at the end of the day are catty and competitive as they want to steal your man. I am not saying this is not true, as sometimes it can happen, but I am certain it happens less than we all realise. It would have been nice if Lydia did all of this just to stress out Georgia.

Overall, I will have to give this book 2.5/ 5 stars. I would have given it a 4 if it wasn’t for the cliche twist at the end.