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Ruth Mancini was born in South-West London and educated in London and Cambridge where she gained a Bachelors degree in languages and a post-graduate diploma in law. For several years she worked in the publishing industry before becoming a practising lawyer, author and freelance writer.
She now lives in Oxfordshire, UK with her husband and two children. She blogs at www.ruthmancini.com and can be found on Twitter @RuthMancini1 and Facebook at www.facebook.com/ruth.mancini.author
Reviewed by Natasha Jackson for Readers' Favorite
Swimming Upstream begins with our main character, Lizzie, facing the dilemma of needing to end things with her long term boyfriend Larsen, but having no idea how to do it. The problem Lizzie has is that she has no idea what the chasm between them is, but she knows that she feels lonely even when they are together. You know when you compare your relationship to an auto accident that it must be doomed, and that is how we begin Ruth Mancini’s tale of friendship and starting over. Then a car accident occurs and Lizzie has to learn the hard way just how little she meant to the man she spent seven years with, and she does what any brokenhearted woman would do: throws herself into work! She packs up and moves to London where her new life begins.
Ruth Mancini presents a compelling tale of starting over, friendship, and the decisions we must make to keep going each day. Lizzie is armed with her friends, Zara and Catherine, who have their own sets of issues that include an abusive relationship and bipolar disorder which I think the author covers quite adeptly, if a little too efficiently. At times Swimming Upstream moves a little slow and is heavy-handed with the descriptions but that is just a brief distraction from Lizzie’s story. I love that we see Lizzie start over, including making new friends and connecting with old ones because she realized too much of her life had been wrapped in Larsen’s so without him her life felt lonelier than it should have.
There were some things I’d like to see in this story as well as some that could have been left out, but overall it was a solid story that kept me reading until the end.
