Four women in different circumstances share a house for six months. One has separated from her husband after family disagreements. One is an overweight businesswoman determined to turn her life around. One is a generous young woman who feels unwanted in her family home, and the last is a teenage mother.

Lots of potential which, alas, wasn't fully realised. The characters seem flat, the conversations, while realistic, don't add much, and the climax is over-dramatic and unecessary. Morever, although set mainly in 2006, the overall feel was of a 1960s Liverpool saga.

On the other hand, the story flows well with a lot of subplots that weave together nicely, and there are some interesting minor characters. No doubt Maureen Lee's many fans will enjoy this book but it wasn't really to my taste. Would make good holiday reading since it's easy enough to put down and resume at any time. ( )

I had never read any books by Maureen Lee before reading 'Nothing Lasts Forever'. Living abroad, I get most of my English books at second-hand book fairs, and I picked up this book recently. The back cover blurb sounded interesting - four women, all having their own problems, find themselves sharing a house and building unlikely friendships.

For the first 350 pages, I enjoyed what I was reading. The different women, and a little of their back stories, were introduced via four prologues, and then the main body of the novel started. I wanted to find out about Brodie, Diana, Vanessa and Rachel, and was looking forward to watching their interactions.

Yes, there was a sense in which nothing much happened, and there were times when I struggled to work out if what I was reading was happening in the present, or in a character's recollections of the past. And it was a shame that we were not introduced to Rachel's inner thoughts at all - her character was only seen through other's eyes, and I would have liked to see events from her perspective.

On the other hand, there was a certain amount of drama, not too much, but enough to keep me interested and reading. I wanted to know what would happen to these people, how their lives would work out. here were other positives too. People formed relationships, but I was not subjected to detailed sex scenes. The only bad language was used by one character and was 'in keeping' with that character. So I was not torn between 'good story' and 'offensive content', always a bonus.

Then I hit the 'climactic event' and felt, quite bluntly, that it was a failure which ruined an until that point fairly good read. Apart from anything else, I feel it was unnecessary - it would have been more in keeping with the tone of the novel to have the characters move apart because life had moved on without the dramatic 'impetus', and in actual fact this is what happens in the rest of the book, and one has the impression the end position of all the characters would have been the same without the 'tragedy'. On top of that, the event itself, and the consequences, such as they were, were handled in such a mundane, flat manner that I was unable to feel any emotion other than irritation. I was not surprised, shocked, or even upset.

My final emotion, having finished reading the book, is to feel insulted by an author who seems to have such a low view of my emotional and reading capacity that she has made very little effort to stir up that emotion through moving prose. Instead she left me with an ending that, for all the surface drama, was blank and void and deeply unsatisfying. I am in two minds as to what to do with my copy now - to donate it to a book fair to be picked up by some unsuspecting book lover... or to keep it and study it in an endeavour to find out why a plot with such promise can end in such disappointment. ( )

** spoiler alert ** I didn't think that I would like this book because it is so far removed from anything that Maureen has written before as the novel is set in the present day. However I did enjoy it despite some obvious flaws.

I felt the ending was rushed and as Diana was such a central character more emphasis could have been placed on what happened to her. Megan was extremely fond of Diana her grief was told in one line.

I would have liked to have known what happened with Vanessa and Reggie, perhaps another book could have been made. I found the whole Charlie plotline a little unbelievable.

I didn't really see the point of Maisie's character, she seemed to waltz in, have her baby and then leave. She seemed to be there just to act as a way of Brodie and Colin to seperate.

I would have liked to have read more about Megan's trip to Ireland and perhaps Brodie could have gone with her. ( )

great ( )