Book Review: The Queen of Wishful Thinking by Milly Johnson
Our female lead character is Bonnie. Bonnie has had a hard few years and personal dramas have taken their toll, meaning she tolerates her husband’s, Stephen, deplorable behaviour. Stephen is an OCD tight-fisted manipulative character who has no redeeming qualities.
Bonnie’s boss doesn’t help matters. She works in an antique store which was once owned by her father and his partner. The two old men have both passed away, and Bonnie’s circumstances have meant her father’s partner’s son has taken over the business. He treats Bonnie like a low class citizen and shows her zero respect.
I don’t think it’s any big spoiler to say that Bonnie soon leaves and takes up a job with a rival antiques store, one owned by Lew.
Lew has had a couple of his own tragedies of late. Lew’s marriage is shadowed by the tragedy of his wife’s, Charlotte, miscarriage. He is also lucky to be alive after suffering a heart attack. The heart attack became a wake up call for him. He resigned from his well paid banking job in the city and bought a village antique shop.
Johnson has a gift for making even the most mundane occupations seem exciting. In Afternoon Tea… it was cleaning, this time we get a glimpse into the antique business. I suppose it might be that Australia has far less antiques to peddle and therefore, I’m quite clueless, but I was surprised and quite fascinated by the way these shops work and enjoyed all the scenes set there. There is a huge cast of supporting characters at the shop and they add a bit of colour and fun to the book (The Leo the lion story is so mad, I assume it’s true.)
There is less fun with the main storylines of Lew and Bonnie.
Stephen was so creepy that at times I thought I was reading a psychological thriller. And not only is Lew’s wife horrid, I would run a mile from his entire friend group!
There are a few topical issues the book touches on such as domestic violence, depression and mental health. There is also a focus on assisted suicide which is an understandably touchy subject. Johnson manages to weave them all into the story seamlessly and quite respectfully.
Lew is a lovely character. I adored him. Bonnie was also nice enough but I must say that the title of the book didn’t suit her at all. I got rather frustrated by her intense pessimism in fact. Perhaps a better title would be Negative Nelly.
This book has a lot of traits I adored in Afternoon Tea… Despite being around 500 pages long, it was a fast easy read; for the most the characters were ordinary people who you could imagine live down the road; the setting was cute and typically English; the characters too were very English; and I appreciate the fact they were older.
The book lost me a little by concentrating perhaps too much on the breakdown of Bonnie and Lew’s respective marriages. Yes, it needed to be explained and we needed to believe they were both doing the right thing by leaving their spouses, but I would have liked a bit less of Stephen and Charlotte and more of Lew and Bonnie.
4 out of 5
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