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I struggled to give "Tully" three stars. This book started out really intriguing - the first third of the book I thouroughly enjoyed. As I started to get into the middle of the book, I realised that it would have greatly benefited from proper editing. It is obvious that 'Tully' is Paulina Simon's first book, and at times it seems she has something to prove.

This book was far, far too long. It repeated itself so much and drew out unecessary sub-plots with too much description. Halfway through the book, I was wondering where it was going and why I was still reading it. The main character, Tully is absoloutley awful and extrememly hard to like or empathise with. Also, the way the men in her life stick with her despite all the things she does and how poorly she treats everyone is very unbelievable. Throughout the whole book, I just kept feeling like every emotion was fake - Tully's 20 year grief for her friend, her undying hatred of her Mother, her relationships with Robin, Jack and Jeremy. There were also so many characters whose storyline's were just written out with no explanation. I felt as though Jeremy, Julie, Tully's Father, Shakie and many others were an unecessary addition to the story. I also had trouble understanding why anyone wanted anything to do with Tully at all, I found myself getting very frustrated with this book.

Also, the character's names were a turn-off. For some reason, I just couldn't believe there were characters called Shakie and Boomerang, among others.

The biggest dissapointment of this book - which originally showed so much promise - was the arduous, drawn out ending, which was a total anti-climax. I kept expecting the story to go somewhere - instead it went around in circles. I felt cheated that I came to the end of such a long and painful read only to find the ending was so dissapointing, and the author could have cut out half the book and the ending still would have been the same and made sense.

Overall, I was dissapointed in 'Tully' and frustrated throughout the course of reading the story. It was a good attempt at a first novel but would have greatly benefited from a serious edit and reshaping of the story. At first I liked this book, but with each page, I grew to dislike it more and more. It was a struggle to finish, and not worth the time it takes to read it. Unfortunate, as it did show some promise.