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Lovely story. Great insights into medicines, hospitals, immigrants, private schools, marriage, and (from pregnancy to diapers and colic) childbirth. Interesting looks at what are probably good descriptions of Philadelphia and Belize and parts of India. I want to read her other book (having read the first few pages, which are appended to this book).

Several words were unfamiliar or previously unknown to me: p3 performative p7 dingy (meaning the car exterior was full of dings) p64 milquetoast p274 sanative p282 limned p283 deplaned and a few medical terms!

Poor grammar or syntax: p1 "who only owned one car" should be "who owned only one car" pp28+153 "slinked" is OK for Scrabble apparently but not literature p74 "parents, whom she thought would ..." - no: "who ... would" p98 pry should be prise p211 "had showed" is not the best p254 "Or, you know ..." sentence should have the speech verb straight after the speaker's name rather than at the end after two more clauses (That's a much shorter list than the average I have recorded for modern books; well done, Madi and proofreader!) But I was irritated by the frequent intrusion of an unnecessary comma after a parenthetical expression that had no comma before it. Both or none, please! And is it really OK to omit the traditional comma after initial "Oh"?

Good story.

Goodreads is out of date, technically lying, when it still says "There are no editions with format Paperback." What I have just read is a paperback (owned by Manawatu District Libraries). The story runs from page 1 to page 369. "First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Orion Books, ..." Printed and bound in Australia, which naturally makes it physically easier to handle.

As the back cover blurb indicates, the heroine, Lucy ("Loose" to her friends!), suffers from low self-esteem and tries to present herself as someone she's not. Fairly depressing reading in parts, but eventually her friends persuade her that she can be loved. Her brother was unkind to her as a child, but the reason comes out in the end.

Inconsistent punctuation; too few appearances of "whom" - e.g. on p358. No quotation marks - which can be confusing when the reader can't be sure which parts of a paragraph are speech or narrative.
p18 move "whether" up to before "if" and follow it with a comma
p31 insert "so" before "translucent"
p66 "The closer they get ..." but no comparative follows in the main clause (except in a parenthetical phrase)
p78 - insert "Hannah" before "being the closest"
p103 - can she really see a man's teeth if her nose is squashed into his armpit?

Wrong word or typo:
p2 "homogenous" needs another "e"
p35 "that Lucy" should be"since Lucy"
p50 "everyone ... are" should be "everyone ... is"
p134 careening should be careering
p168 oblige should be obliges
pp 193,208 "hey" meaning "eh"
p209 "All together" should be "altogether"
p238 "betrayal to" should be "betrayal of"
p240 clearly unwanted comma after "load Winston"
p243 "How her and Danny" should be "How she and Danny"
p310 "sometime" (an adjective) should be "some time"
p338 "come Cam," should be "comes Cam,"
p361 Smoothes

North Americanisms:
p2 stoop
pp277,295 laying
p308 lay
pp 281, 288, 315 off of

Rare or new words that are probably OK:
pp4 and 345 matter-of-factly
p63 chored
p77 Kentish-Essaxon
p167 mandy (the drug)
p175 spasmically
p290 converse (to), meaning in contrast (to)
*p358 pinkens

My edition, published by Orion, borrowed from Feilding library, has 370 pages plus 2 pages of credits. Not listed here.
The Goodreads blurb, copied from the back cover, is wrong in the first sentence. (Blurb writers are often wrong.) Iris finds the first message after the new year has pealed out from Big Ben.
The Goodreads heading, above, is also wrong: it should say "it" rather than "It".
Overall impression from a proofreader's viewpoint is "inconsistent punctuation".
Reached page 14 with only one page marked for comment - the one with the word "smushed": "informal•North American", says Google; merger of smash and crush.

Continuing to the end:

p 3 the Danish product is officially "LEGO", not "Lego".
p 41 "that week which" needs comma for non-defining clause
p 59 "between him" should be "between himself"
p 221 5 June is 5 months, not 6, from 1 January
p 231 "very strong tea" for three people from one bag? Not on this planet.
p 240 "who" should be "whom"
p 281: "fragrance" as a verb - only Wiktionary seems to accept that.

A couple of apparent date errors that I didn't have time to document. That sort of error often needs many pages of rereading to confirm.

So, less to grumble about than in most modern books I've read.

Enjoyable descriptions of stately homes.

Satisfactory conclusion; blokes shouldn't take the risk.

Lovely story with great mix of characters and a budding romance resolved fairly late in the book (with another one merely hinted at). Jess's personality develops heart-warmingly.

The edition that I read is a "Mass Market Paperback" 978 1 3987 0048 2, typeset in Lymington.
373 pages of story and one each of acknowledgments and credits. (How can we tell goodreads about an unlisted edition?)

Cover picture is inconsistent with text; e.g. several details of number 24. Not unusual for cover pictures!

Punctuation a bit inconsistent but above average for modern works I have read although many misplaced apostrophes and some "who" that should be"whom" and more than one definitely wrong comma ("a very, merry, Christmas to you") or omission of a comma ("... in particular Martha who ..." - clearly a non-defining relative clause starting)

Some unusual (maybe even novel) words such as holly-sprigged, assault-y, It'd, catastrophising, div (not in the Scrabble dictionary), comradery, squirmy (meaning uncomfortable rather than moving oddly), strangley (tending to strangle), goldfished (meaning stood with mouth open, not the Urban Dictionary meanings), shushed

North Americanisms: "off of"; kvetching. Same with "they arrived outside of Jess's house"?

Misused words or typos:
swotted for swatted
attending for attended
those kind of
peel for peal
they'd couldn't play
taking for talking
"comprised of" for "comprising" or "composed of"


p 37 "across the road Drea's" needs "from" inserted.
p 197 "By throwing herself at Mr Winters' mercy, ... he'd forgive her ..." - is that three errors in one sentence? Definitely one misrelated participle.
p 247 "arrival of Gemma in a ... saucy ... outfit. A couple of the Rob'n'Bobs wolf-whistled and were promptly shushed by ... the protective glare of Gemma's husband" - NO; he was one of the Rob'n'Bobs, explained on p 40.
p 274 "steamer trunk with a sticker on it for Timbuktoo" - unlikely in real world as Timbuktu is 18 km from port.
p 324 "and he was stranger" should insert "a".

Poor Jess may have paid for the time the removals men spent joining in the snow-fight, but the time saved by the neighbours' help could have negated that.

On her walk back from number 24 she would not have seen the florists' house close up as soon as the text implies.