The Nanny**

Jo is depressed and wants a new life. Vanessa and Dick need a nanny for their children. The rest of the book is mostly about how wonderful Jo is, but I don’t actually like her very much.

Jo is supposed to be a very kind person, yet she spends a lot of time looking down on Vanessa and Dick and pitying them for having such a bad relationship. I actually think Vanessa and Dick are a wonderful couple who have a great relationship. It’s true that their relationship isn’t all that strong when Jo comes into their lives, but their scenes together still have a lot of warmth and humour, and I felt from the start that they would work out their problems with or without Jo’s help.

Jo is whiny and miserable, and a total hypocrite. Melissa Nathan clearly believes she’s a lovely girl who’s had a terrible life and deserves a bit of love and sympathy. And she probably does, but it’s very difficult to like a character when the author is trying to ram it down your throat how wonderful and special she is and how much everybody loves her. I kind of feel like I don’t want to waste my sympathy on her. She gets plenty from everyone else, and I was far more worried about Vanessa and Dick, who are having a much more difficult time than Jo, and their insecure but very intelligent daughter Cassandra, who is being bullied at school.

Jo isn’t even particularly good at her job. Okay, she is very depressed, which would account for some of it, but I still think she was very lucky not to get sacked. If Vanessa and Dick hadn’t had so much trouble finding a nanny; if every man Jo laid eyes on didn’t have a habit of falling in love with her on the spot (why?), she could have got herself into serious trouble. The main reason she doesn’t is because policemen Gerry and Nick are even worse at their job than she is at hers.

Jo does have a horrible shock towards the end, and you do feel for her – but there’s just one problem. Jo’s own behaviour is very similar to the behaviour of the person who hurt her. Maybe she hasn’t been behaving that way for as long, or in so serious a manner, but she is far from an innocent victim. The only other characters I don’t like are Josh, Dick’s son and one of Jo’s love interests, and her best friend Sheila. I can’t stand Jo, but the way Josh treats her at first is still really awful. The only time his treatment of Jo seemed reasonable was when he mentioned hearing her having sex with her boyfriend Shaun. Josh didn’t put it in the most tactful way, but I couldn’t get over the fact she’d do it in her employer’s house. And I don’t even remember her asking if he could stay the night. I think that’s really disrespectful.

The Nanny does have some great moments. Nathan has created some wonderful characters, and many of her scenes are original and funny. Without Jo, I’m sure I’d have loved the book. There is quite enough going on for Vanessa, Dick and their children without some snobby, incompetent Mary Poppins wannabe showing up. There are a lot of fart and poo jokes, which I really enjoyed (although I don’t know what real grown-ups would think), and all the characters except one (I think you know which one) are interesting and believable. I really enjoyed the all the subplots, particularly Cassandra’s and Vanessa‘s/Dick’s, and the way they all fitted together. It was good to read a book that focused on the whole family, not just the adults, and Nathan gave the children humour and intelligence, and made sure they weren’t nauseatingly cute.