A review by ukpsymum
And God Created the Au Pair by Benedicte Newland

2.0

I was looking for a light read, and this fit the bill. It was indeed funny, and I spent a bit of time laughing out loud whilst reading, much to the annoyance of my family. For that, it was worth it. Future readers, be aware, there is essentially no plot. This is basically a compilation of emails between two sisters about the hilarities of day-to-day life with small children. In that vein, I have to say that both writers are funny indeed, and would likely provide good entertainment at a dinner party (which is good, as this seems to be a very big priority in their lives). I can see how the authors kept up a column in the paper on this for a bit. It is well suited to that genre. Less well-suited, possibly, to book format. So, treat the book like a weekly Sunday paper, picking it up for a bit of laughs here and there. This might also help to distract from the fact that any book-like content that might focus on anything other than laughing at themselves or laughing (and putting down) others was pretty much entirely missing. I personally grew weary hearing about how dreadful, hopeless or boring other people were. My goodness, the judgements! It seemed that one of the sisters, "Nell" adopted a tone and content that had a bit of heart for some of her 'friends,' but this was largely lacking in the other sister - who seemed to respond flippantly to rather dire and serious circumstances in Nell's life (e.g., miscarriage, a friend's very sad divorce) before quickly moving back to mundane (if humorous) snippets about her own life. Although humour was clearly the point of the book, it would have been a more successful book had it been mixed a bit more with perspective and humanness. (Perhaps that statement would earn me the title of "soppy" and "boring" from the "characters" in the book).