How Hard Can It Be?

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I was so happy to see Kate again! I LOVE her spunk and how her life looks so seamless to the outsider while in reality she is always struggling to hold it all together. She’s always one step away from a funny yet messy disaster.

I fumble blindly on the bedside table and my baffled hand finds reading glasses, distance glasses, a pot of moisturizer and three foil sheets of pills before I locate my phone. Its small window of milky, metallic light reveals that my daughter is dressed in the Victoria’s Secret candy-pink shorty shorts and camisole I foolishly agreed to buy her after one of our horrible rows. From the first chapter I was laughing and I was in love with this book. The only reason I had to put it down was because the battery in my Kindle was screaming at me that it needed more juice. (Damn needy thing) I truly love the characters that Robyn has created. And the Granny Porn group sounds a lot like me and my girlfriends in a couple of decades. *grins* I highly recommend this book, especially to all the women in the sandwich generation. I will be immediately seeking out Ms. Pearson’s first book.

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Perceptive and funny....Allison Pearson has a gift for comedy, but the best bits of How Hard Can It Be? are her sharp asides about modern life." -- The Times (U.K.) This one attracted me because there are so few books about older women that promise to be fun instead of dreary Problem Novels. I know what the problems of being old are, thank you. I don’t need to read fiction about it. each day it gets slightly harder to retrieve the things that I know. Correction. The things that I know that I knew. At forty nine years of age, the tip of my tongue becomes a very crowded place.” Or this...“Today is my seventh session at the gym this week. Even God got to rest on the seventh day, but God was only trying to create the world, not restore a middle-aged female body to a state of battle readiness.” I hate to tell her how bad it’ll be as the years go on! She shakes her head and I smell my conditioner on her hair, the expensive one I specifically told her not to use. From a career as a local journalist in the north of England, he rose to public prominence as a presenter of the original format of Top Gear in 1988. Since the mid-1990s Clarkson has become a recognised public personality, regularly appearing on British television presenting his own shows and appearing as a guest on other shows. As well as motoring, Clarkson has produced programmes and books on subjects such as history and engineering. From 1998 to 2000 he also hosted his own chat show, Clarkson.

The funniest and most feminist writing of the year… How Hard Can It Be? is that rare thing: a sequel that matches and even surpasses the original…Every line is meticulous; every reflection on parenthood hilarious, or else so true it’s heartbreaking.” — The Telegraph (UK) If you, too, are part of the sandwich generation, and you are looking for some laughs and commiseration, How Hard Can It Be is worth a read. While it was essentially lighthearted, it was the perfect read that left me with a smile on my face. So Kate Ready is 49, almost fifty (which seems young to me, but still props to the author). She’s married with two teens, and an unemployed husband who has decided to become a mountain bike rider, and then a counselor of some sort, very New Age sounding. Right to the expensive cost.Few sequels beat the original, but How Hard Can It Be? does so hands down ... zesty, razor-sharp and hilarious. It’s full of such quotable casual profundity on the female condition I couldn't read it without a pencil to underline the abundance of great lines. Get ready for Kate!’ TINA BROWN, magazine editor and bestselling author Monday, 1:37 A.M. Such a weird dream. Emily is crying, she’s really upset. Something about a belfry. A boy wants to come round to our house because of her belfry. She keeps saying she’s sorry, it was a mistake, she didn’t mean to do it. Strange. Most of my nightmares lately feature me on my unmentionable birthday having become totally invisible and talking to people who can’t hear me or see me. For now, I really like this book and will most certainly keep reading it. The parts that I have read from this book have been good enough to get a 9/10 rating from me and I think that I will recommend this book to all of my friends. The following excerpt was selected because it shows how problems in the daughter's life parallel those of the mother. In the following quotation our protagonist is editing her daughter's school assignment to analyze Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and she considers the writing about Shakespeare also reflects the dilemmas of teenage life that her daughter faces. The irony is that the same can be said for Kate herself, our book's narrator. Plenty of shrewd insights to make up for the dodgy spelling. She really should have more confidence in herself, but girls like Emily set themselves impossibly high standards so they never feel good about themselves. What was it she said to me? “I’m not the cleverest, I’m not the prettiest, I’m not the anythingest.” It’s the disease of the day. ... ... Although not my usual genre, I had heard many good things about Allison's previous book 'I Don't Know How She Does It', and so decided to enter the giveaway for 'How Hard Can It Be?'. I'm delighted I won as I loved this book! (I will now definitely be seeking out the first one to read too). Although this is a continuation of 'I Don't Know...', it stands by itself as well and I wasn't confused by the story at any point.

The pressures placed on this woman are extreme and can be interpreted as satire of the devaluing of women of a certain age. But the author portrays this woman as enthusiastically invested in this unrealistic game of trying to be young. There are occasional hints of resentment, but not what I would want for a protest of such an environment. Fu’evah,” Emily says again. At the thought of this unwanted immortality, her mouth collapses into an anguished O—a popped balloon of grief. Yep, I eeped and proceeded to talk (type) Robyn's ears off. Something I mentioned in my reply was that this book should be made into a movie, as I'd buy the DVD and watch it continuously. So, I've been told that 'How Hard Can It Be?' has indeed been optioned for a movie, and the author is currently writing the script. Another bit of good news which has made me very happy, is that there is going to be a sequel. I, for one, can't wait. So, in my opinion, this was brilliant and this author got it all right. Every single aspect of this book. It's one of my favourites, and my year has started off just great! I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and Netgalley in return for an unbiased review (thank you!). As you can probably guess, it is revealed that the indifferent husband is having an affair - with a 26 year-old fellow student. But that’s okay, because Kate has reunited with a client she fell in love with seven years before. (She nobly broke it off before anything happened.) Fast-forward to present day: they have an affair this time (that Kate breaks off again) so the cheating becomes a goose/gander sort of equation.I do have one problem with "How Hard Can it Be?". The romance of the main character is exactly the kind that irritates the crap out of me...love at first sight for two gorgeous people and mind blowing sex from the get go...but it's forgivable as the characters are likeable and I'm happy for anyone who is having mind blowing sex. Even if they are fictional. I would have happily read about her experiences at the firm along with her struggles with menopause, memory, transatlantic friendships and unexpected support from a new friend.

This was a good book. I really enjoyed it and sadly, related to a lot of it. With menopause looming in the near future, it was really fun to have her perspective on menopause and reaching fifty years of age. And then with the unhappy marriage and the teenagers to deal with as well, I found myself laughing and wanting to cry all the way through. Allison Pearson has written an “OMG, yes!” book. As in, she totally gets it. This book, about turning 50 and entering the age of invisibility, hits all the correct notes. It’s a real mix of comedy and drama, between dealing with perimenopause, teenagers, aging parents, a husband seeking to find himself at everyone else’s expense and the need to stay relevant in today’s business world. A book about needing to laugh so you don’t cry.Filled with humor and wit, readers will cheer on Kate as she navigates this frenzied life and struggles to hold everything—and everyone—together." —Shereads.com Laugh-out-loud funny and entirely relatable--you'll fall in love with Kate all over again." -- Popsugar