Winging It by Emma Murray

WINGING IT by Emma Murray

Saoirse’s husband David gets offered a great new job, but it means moving the family from a nice area of London to New York for a whole year. David, Saoirse (pronounced Seersha) and their five-year-old daughter Anna move to Manhattan, but things are not as they expected. While David’s new company (The Firm) have paid for an apartment for them to live in, it isn’t what they hoped for. For starters, there’s only one bedroom. Then Saoirse finds living in such a big city is intimidating and her anxiety increases, so she’d much prefer to stay in their apartment all the time. But David wants to keep the job, so what can they do? Can Saoirse and Anna adapt to living in a big American city? Can they make new friends?

We follow their story in this novel and find out what happens to them on their big adventure moving from England to the USA.

I really liked the family, they seemed very realistic and believable. I could definitely relate to Saoirse and could see myself in many of the situations she is in, especially moving to a place where she doesn’t know anyone and having to try to make friends again. Anna, the daughter, is very well-written too; a lot of the things she does and says took me back to when my kids were that age – and it’s a lot of hard work looking after five-year-olds!

There are lot of great characters in it, especially their friends and family. Even the smaller characters (like the shop owners) are brought to life well. I enjoyed Emma’s style of writing.

It’s an easy book to get into. It isn’t riotously funny, but I didn’t expect it to be. It has some funny parts in it, but they aren’t slapstick, they are the kind of things that can and do happen in real life.

At the end of the e-book, there’s an extract of Time Out, which is apparently the previous book featuring Saoirse and I have downloaded it to read too, as I really enjoyed the characters. But Winging It is perfectly fine as a standalone book.

8 out of 10