Amazon.co.uk:Customer reviews: The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club: an uplifting, emotional story set in the sweeping Irish countryside perfect for fans of Sheila O'Flanagan

Top positive review

A amazing and heartwarming story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 June 2021

What can I say! I love Faith Hogan. I have read every book from this author and not one of them has disappointed me! Her warm and colourful story telling grabs me every time . Her characters are real and I feel like i know them within the first few chapters.
Liz,Elizabeth and Joe are not just friends they are family in every way. Ballycove is like any other Seaside village in the west of Ireland but after reading this book i want to live there and get to know all of it's inhabitants!
This book is not just about family and friendship but also love,loss and discovery. There are many facets to this story and the many unexpected twists and turns kept me glued to every page.
Everytime I finish one of Faith Hogan's books i feel the loss of many good friends i have made throughout reading her story's but also the excitement of meeting and making more friends in her future books.
Thank you G.H.

26 people found this helpful

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148Julie

Predictable and boring

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 May 2021

This was so predictable and unbelievable. I cannot believe such ‘feel good’ drivel attracts such glowing reviews. Yes the author writes well, but nothing remotely believable happens and there is no imagination or creativity present throughout

66 people found this helpful

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148Julie

Predictable and boring

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 May 2021

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66 people found this helpful

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Jan Ruth

The Power of Friendship

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 July 2021

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Three women facing difficult life stages find emotional release and form bonds by swimming in the Irish sea. Elizabeth is a widow struggling with huge debts, a crumbling house, and an old-fashioned surgery. Her friend, Jo, is facing her own life-changing problems but enlists the help of her daughter, to discover that Lucy prefers a small village medical practice to that of a busy London hospital, after all. Meanwhile, Dan has lost his high-profile job and is renting a cottage in the village to write a novel, and seek out his real blood mother.

This is a gentle, undemanding, predictable, rather cosy read despite some of the subject matter being about serious issues such as cancer, adoption, and debt. There isn’t too much tension, the main characters and the village community are all pleasant, and everything is nicely tied-up at the end. Some of the scenes felt a little contrived and lacking in depth and I don’t know why, but I expected this novel to be more gritty. Descriptions of the location were very good indeed and there was a great sense of time and place, but I didn’t feel the plot was especially real, or believable, and there was a distinct overuse of, ‘gently,’ and ‘softly,’ cropping up in dialogue tags. Overall, a decent read for a dose of easy escapism in a beautiful wild setting, and a story which champions the strength of female friendship.

40 people found this helpful

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Lynette Smith

Unrealistic!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 August 2021

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When I first started reading I thought the story must be set fifty or sixty years ago. The two older female protagonists must be about my age (62) but are depicted as women who may have been from my parent’s generation! Girdles, twinsets, pearls?! Really?! One of the other things that jarred was Lucy’s appointment as a GP having been working in A&E and only having an informal interview with the previous incumbent’s widow! I realize the health care system is different in Ireland but in the UK GPs require specific training and qualifications before taking up a post. Pretty sure the same will apply in Ireland. Also, who, when coming across a drunken teen who has injured their head and bled all over the carpet, would feed them chicken sandwiches and have a nice chat?! Three stars because the writing is quite good but factually all over the place.

31 people found this helpful

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B. Bampton

It's rather twee and the plot is full of holes.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 January 2022

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I intended to give it 3 stars but to be honest I just didn't like it. It's not a bad book but although the author writes quite well, she doesn't have the descriptive powers needed to make the long narratives interesting.
The plot is all over the place:
a) It's difficult to place in time. The sinking of a tourist boat on the Thames could be the Marchioness disaster, which would place it around 1990 but Niall is furious about not having his games console which would place it in the 2000s. Does it matter? Well yes. If Elizabeth had her baby in 1960 she might well have been dreading the mother and baby home but post 1970 I doubt it.
b) How old is Elizabeth? Let's say she's a teenager when her child is born; that fits with her fear of the mother and baby home. However, Lucy thinks of her as an old woman like her mother, which would make her early 60s or so. In that case she'd have been about 30 when her child was born, an adult woman, and she'd have hot footed it over the England where she would have had choices about what happened to her baby.
c) Then there's the gay doctor. He's a lot older than Elizabeth. Could be 30 if she's a teenager (but then Lucy, who's about 40, wouldn't think of her as an old woman). However, if Elizabeth is 30, he'd be 40+, a bit late to try to hide his sexuality. This is a village where everybody knows your business.
OK, perhaps I'm being pedantic but my other complaint is it's twee. If I go into detail I'll spoil the plot but basically everybody lives happily ever in their ideal home/ job/ school/ whatever they dreamt of. The locals accept the outsiders without any hint of unease. Elizabeth is so understanding it makes me cross. The only person who doesn't get a kind word is the doctor, who faced the stigma of being gay. Is that fair?

21 people found this helpful

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Silke KG

A amazing and heartwarming story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 June 2021

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26 people found this helpful

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Mandy James

Breathtakingly beautiful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 October 2021

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The writing is breathtakingly beautiful, the story is delightful, humorous and at times so poignant it brought me to tears. I can't remember the last time I couldn't see the words because of my tears. I do wish we had a midnight swimming club here. I live five miles from the Atlantic, and feel exactly the same way about it as Jo. It's part of me, lifts my spirits and I come alive when I'm near it or in it. Thanks to Faith for writing such a wonderful book. Highly recommended!

20 people found this helpful

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Mrs. Olga A. Danes-volkov

Definitely feel good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 November 2021

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Not really my sort of book but a nice, easy read. Full of heart warming sentiments etc. etc. My only real beef was the fact that someone cannot have read it through or they would have noticed the incessant repetition of "he/she said softly" I thought I would scream if I saw the word "softly" again!

15 people found this helpful

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Nice feelgood story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 November 2021

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This is a nice easy read, but really could be improved by having an editor tidy it up. The time-lines slip oddly, making it awkward to keep track of the story. Then I ended up counting how many times on a page the author had the characters speak "softly". It seems the whole of the west coast of Ireland is peopled with whisperers! Or perhaps they all have laryngitis?

11 people found this helpful

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Althea

Softly softly

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2022

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This has to be one of the most ridiculous books I've ever read. Some of the descriptions of landscapes are ok, as is the predictable happy ever after ending if you like that in a book. The author acknowledges her "brilliant" 12-strong team of editors, but how can they have allowed such glaring anachronisms, ageism and sloppy writing? This so called contemporary novel has a busy A&E consultant filling in a form announcing that she's taking a year out and within a week she is working as a single-handed GP with no extra training, registration or regulation just like the 1920s (but with no responsibility for out of hours provision ) ; Elizabeth , who must be in her 60, wears corsets twinsets and pearls... , a stranger from London finds a drunken boy with a head injury in his rented cottage and immediately befriends him... all so unbelievable. But the most unforgivable feature is the excessive use of "he/she said softly",which I counted 93 times and occasionally 3 times on one page -so very irritating. I don't know how this book has had such good reviews

5 people found this helpful

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Trinity Zero

Well written if you want something gentle.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 May 2022

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This is an entertaining, cosy, undemanding read that I completed in 3 days. Perfect for the beach or a bit of escapism from the real world. There is no real angst or tension, and perhaps predictable, but I loved the characters, and descriptions of the setting are excellent. I could easily see my self in the village and wild coastal setting.
The plot was soft, almost unbelievable in places but I felt the story just about got away with it. Given the subject matter though, it could have been more powerful and gritty. It became a bit too soporific to be a 5 star read but I would happily pick up another book by this author. There is nothing wrong with a gentle read from time to time
Overall, I enjoyed it. Would recommend if you want a bit of calm escapism.

2 people found this helpful

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