The Last to Know (Melissa Hill)**

There’s nothing I hate more than a book about writers (apart from a book about projectile vomiting), and this book seems to have writers and writing all over the place. Brooke, a publisher in Australia, is reading a new manuscript, telling the story of Eve (who wants her partner Liam to marry her) her sister Sam (a famous writer who loves someone she can’t have) and Anna (who is pretending she’s not pregnant). And it’s not only Brooke who has to read all about them: we have to as well. And you know how I feel about books within a book.

The book is actually mostly about Eve and Sam, with just a chapter about Brooke here and there. Nothing really happens to Brooke except her reading the book, talking about what a great style the writer has, and then giving her opinions of the characters. Not only is this rather boring, it sounds rather as though Melissa Hill is congratulating herself on her own writing skills, and telling us what we have to think of the characters. Hill probably didn’t mean to do this at all though – and in order for her highly original story to work, it would have been difficult to avoid these pitfalls.

But I found the book very annoying. I hardly ever agreed with Brooke about the characters. Maybe most people would agree with her, but I think there are always going to be people with different views of fictional characters, just as there are going to be different views of real people.

I didn’t agree that Anna was cold. I thought she was really lovely. Brooke and the other characters go on about how sweet Eve is, and how giving, and there is some truth in this, although I always found her a bit clingy and disturbing. But Anna is at least as giving as Eve is, and it’s clear to me throughout that, even when she’s making some crazy decisions, she is trying to do the right thing. Not all her actions make sense though. I wasn’t convinced by Anna’s decision to hide the pregnancy from her boyfriend Ronan. There wasn’t really a convincing reason for it – except as a really obvious way of making you start wondering whether the baby was Ronan’s – and once the pregnancy is out in the open, everything is more or less fine. Anna’s stupidity is part of the reason why she is such a likeable character (whatever Brooke says), but Hill really does stretch credibility too far at times.

The most successful character is probably Sam. She’s very kind and supportive, even though she’s not always having a great time herself. Her crush on Anna’s boyfriend Ronan is nearly as adorable as Ronan himself. Eve gets her knickers in a twist, worried that Sam is going to make a move on him, but if she knew her sister half as well as I did, she’d know this would never happen. And there’s nothing wrong with having a crush on someone. I’ve got a crush on all sorts of people, including some married ones, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to make a move on any of them. I think Boris Johnson is really sexy, but even if he was single, I know we wouldn’t get on. I hate politics; I’m even less organised than he is, and I think our differing opinions on the proposed Docklands Light Railway extension to Dagenham Dock would get in the way of any romance.

The Last to Know has a lot of twists, and some of them are very clever. But Sam quite often saw them coming. I wouldn’t have minded but it felt as though I’d hardly had the chance to work anything out for myself. It’s no fun knowing what’s going to happen in advance. Not when I’m reading a book for the first time anyway. And there were plenty of stupid twists too. This is a shame, as the idea is very clever. Perhaps if Eve, Sam and Anna had been given a stronger story, and if Brooke had had a story too (and if she’d dropped all the ooh what great writing crap), it might have worked really well.

And a train from Liverpool Lime Street to London Victoria?????? I don’t think so. Oh, it’s possible. The lines are all joined up. You could get the train from Liverpool Lime Street and follow the usual route as far as Willesden Junction, then the tran could take the Kensington Olympia branch and turn off just before Clapham Junction, taking the line to Battersea Park and Victoria. But apart from the fact that trains on that route just don't exist, what’s the point in doing that? What’s wrong with the direct train to Euston?