Lucy Springer Gets Even

by Lisa Heidke

[Leah]

Lucy Springer’s life is falling apart. Her career as an actress has fallen to the wayside, her children are incredibly challenging and she’s living through renovation hell. Oh – and then her husband, Max, walks out on her and goes to Bali. After a lot of crying and even more wine-drinking, Lucy decides it’s time to get her life back on track and sets about doing exactly that. Trouble is, can she manage it?

Lucy Springer Gets Even is Lisa Heidke’s debut novel. The cover isn’t too inspiring but the blurb on the back more than makes up for it. It’s an incredibly clever novel with funny moments interspersed throughout the book and is definitely up there on the list of great debut novels. The book opens perfectly with Max, Lucy’s husband, saying “I’ve had enough” over their Pad Thai before getting his surfboard and heading off into the night. Lucy thinks he’s going to come back but after a few days she realises he’s not coming back. Particularly when she finds out exactly who he’s gone to Bali with. From there it’s an incredibly enjoyable read as Lucy goes through every emotion possible and eventually decides to get her life back on track.

To like this book you would have to like Lucy. I did. In fact I loved her. It took her a while to finally decide to get her life back on track but from there I just couldn’t put the book down. I couldn’t wait to see what drama would occur next in Lucy’s life. Lucy has her flaws, and is honest about them, and comes across as an incredibly nice person. When she’s not cursing Max, that is! I loved Lucy straight away and felt all of the emotions she felt throughout the book.

Lucy’s kids Bella and Sam were also great. I loved Bella’s insights about various things and she seemed incredibly wise for her years. I didn’t like Max, at all, and hoped he would get some sort of come-uppance. Only a character like Max could think he could get away with a second affair and absconding off to Bali without so much as a second glance. He was a truly mean man. I absolutely LOVED Gloria, Lucy’s best friend/agent. She wasn’t afraid to speak the truth and was quite outspoken which I loved. I loved how eager she was to get Lucy onto the reality TV programmes and I enjoyed Gloria and Lucy’s bickering. Dom, a friend of Lucy’s, wasn’t featured much until the end of the book but I liked him and thought he seemed very sweet. I also found Lucy’s mum hilarious. Panicking throughout everything and coming out with some LOL-worthy comments. However the characters who make the book were Lucy’s builders. Patch was my favourite, closey followed by the T twins. The banter between them all was great to read as well as the power-struggles over the time it was taking to get the house finished.

The book isn’t told in chapters but days so you could have a two-page day followed by an eight-page day so it made it incredibly easy to whizz through. I loved the descriptions of Bali – it sounds like a magical place. However we also saw another side to Bali and Lisa’s descriptions of what happened in Bali were quite harrowing and although I knew it was fictional I could easily imagine it as a real account of how something like that would play out. I applaud Lisa for including that twist in Bali, not many authors would go there and do that.

The book was a bit slow to start but after day 30 it really picked up what with everything that happened. Lucy has a lot thrown at her but is determined to pick her life back up and I applaud her for that. That’s what I liked about her: she wallowed for a while but once she’d made up her mind to get her life back on track there was no stopping her. I was with her all the way and was sad when the book came to a finish. I could have carried on reading about Lucy, the kids, Gloria and the builders for another 100 pages!

Lucy Springer Gets Even really is worth a read – don’t let the cover put you off as I know many people DO judge books by their covers. This book is about what’s inside and inside is a fab story of a woman trying to get her life back together after her husband walks out. It might be a familiar storyline but believe me, this one is one of the best of its kind.