Bernie takes in a mysterious lodger, Gervase, who seems to be able to get to the heart of the boys' troubles and helps the men to see things more clearly about themselves, but can he help them sort out their love lives?

It was an easy read and I felt quite sad after it ended because I liked the characters and wanted to know how their lives continued. He does this thing where he holds their hands and looks deep into their eyes and they go all gooey inside and wind up spilling everything to him. Sean was once a spoiled little brother, who hits it big with his first book, and he has the perfect girlfriend. With barely ten pages to go everything is going perfectly and gets tied up witb a neat bow just as Gervase decide's to disappear from the London family home. The three brothers are dysfunctional and spoiled, and the blame for their problems is shunted onto the women in their lives.Lisa Jewell transcends the British chick lit genre by creating complex characters with problems many readers can relate to. Lisa Jewell's first novel, Ralph’s Party, was published in 1999 and was the best-selling debut novel of the year. Since then she has written another twenty novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs and The Night She Disappeared.

The female characters are only there as plot devices and to cause issues in the lives of the male characters.

You know I adore Lisa Jewell books but in her old books I don't get why she had to put really dumb guys in her books. I didn’t realize at first it was released in 2004, which could have something to do with the difference in writing and style and even subject matter. Gerry and Bernie London are proud parents of Tony, Sean and Ned, three wayward lads whose lives have suddenly reached crisis points. The strangely diffuse characterized parents of these boys hosting a complete stranger who turns out to be a weirdo and a loser (LJ has a soft spot for losers), whose true intentions remain unclear, as it is also unclear why his advice is appreciated by anybody. Someone will get pregnant, someone will be in love with his brother's girlfriend, and a "friend of the family" like a wandering angel, will be there to pick up the pieces, reflect their problems back at them, and teach them to grow up.

The book knits all these stories together and it leaves you with a warm feeling about being part of a family.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

The character for whom the book is titled appears so infrequently the first half of the book I kept wondering why he is even in the story. Also, I love the way Jewell tackles the subject of sibling rivalry with such insight, wit and poignancy. I listened to it and I did not like the narrator so that could be one reason why I didn’t care for it and the second is I was waiting for a mystery because every book I’ve read that is by the schedule has been a suspenseful book but this was just a romance. Since then she has published another twenty-one novels, most lately a number of dark psychological thrillers, including Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs and None of This is True.The first Lisa Jewell book that I read, I really enjoyed but the more that I have read from this author, the more talented I have seen her become!