goodreads | The Happiness Project

Title: The Happiness Project
Author: Pippa James
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 343 pages
Date read: February 2019

1) Exercise more
2) Eat healthily
3) Learn how to live again…

Forty-year-old Alison Lund has always carefully planned everything in her well-ordered life, from colour co-ordinating her beautiful house to persuading her excitable son Alexander that sticker charts are more fun than misbehaving. But Alison’s perfect world has just fallen apart…

Her head is left spinning when her beloved larger than life mother-in-law, Maggie, passes away and Alison is left heartbroken. Every afternoon they’d talk and laugh over a pot of tea, she was the glue that kept Alison together through the first few tough years of motherhood. And now Alison is trying to figure out a future without her.

With a little help from her two best friends, Alison resolves to be more Maggie. After an emotional New Year’s Eve get together, the three women create a happiness project, challenging themselves to step outside their comfort zones and make the most of every single day.

Daring to do things differently, can Alison learn to live more spontaneously and find happiness along the way? Or will letting go be harder than she ever imagined?

A quick and easy read.

Although officially the second in a series, it easily worked as a stand-alone novel as well (I haven't read the first, and didn't feel like I was missing out on anything) and turned out to be a really charming comfort read. It's real life - no big drama or high-stake risks - but just cozy friendship between the three main characters. I'd worried that some of them might be too caricatured, but that ended up not being an issue at all. I really enjoyed getting to know them, and to read about what was going on in their lives.

A low-key book - but sometimes that's exactly what I want and need.