This was a great book for an afternoon on the beach. The storyline was good and I really liked the characters. Dulcie took a little getting used to though. It was a fun read.
Many thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I tried really hard to love this book. It took me forever to finish! It was not about tennis like I originally thought but about friends in various stages in life.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

4/5 Stars.

A character driven novel that will shatter your heart in the end.

Recommended for adult and up.

At first I thought this might be a book about tennis. But it was a fun story of three female friends dealing with love. It was fun to see all the ups & downs. Fun read.

Another spot on book from Mansell! You will root for all three friends finding their happiness Their friendship is realistic and positive no back stabbing Housewives here!

Such an entertaining book that was a pleasure to read.
Some brilliant characters that caught your attention from the start. It was interesting to see three friends, all very different personalities come together to support each other as they go through difficult times and changes to their lifestyles.
It was fabulous to see them all find themselves and to watch them grow.
A great book to relax with and enjoy.

I will rad every single book Jill Mansell ever creates and that’s a fact. I adore this book. I adore her settings every time. I adore her charters and I always want to read more from Jeff. Every time.

Three friends make their resolutions for the new year, each committing to a fresh focus. Liza wants to get married, Dulcie decides that a divorce is the way forward, and Pru will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo in her existing relationship. They are lofty goals, but who better to hold you accountable than your best friends?

While this was, by most accounts, an enjoyable read, I did find myself struggling to connect with any of the three women, and as a result was not as engaged with the story as I would have hoped. As previously noted, I would not rate this as one of Ms Mansell's best, although I will continue to look forward to any new offerings from this tried and true author.

I love Mrs. Mansells stories. The characters and storyline always keep me invested until the end. Thanks for letting me read it.

This is a really great read and I found myself enjoying every little bit of detail that the story gave. It spoke to me as a person and really went above and beyond as a novel. 5/5 stars

The Best Kept Promises.....
Three friends, promises, secrets and .....resolutions- aren’t they made to be broken? The trouble starts with a complete lack of communication from which the inevitable chaos ensues. A fun read in true Jill Mansell style. Perfect chic lit.

Thanks to #NetGalley for the chance to read this book by Jill Mansell. Mixed Doubles is the first book by her I've read. And I'll be honest and say it's not my normal type of book. But trying to step out of my reading rut.

For me the book took sometime to get into seemed to take a bit to get into the story. But then once I got into the story and was really enjoying the book it took a turn and was done. I felt like there was too much to get into the story. Then not enough after the story got going.

This book was so sweet, genuine and engaging! Jill Mansell NEVER disappoints. I will always buy anything she writes.

After receiving a recommendation from Becky at Crooks Books, I was intrigued about trying a Jill Mansell book. When one came up on Netgalley it felt like fate. As it turned out, Jill Mansell will be one of my new go-to chick lit authors for those days when I just want to relax on the beach with a good book! Mixed Doubles was drama-packed while still maintaining a casual, lively pace and realistic character development.

What I loved about this novel was not only that it was character driven but Mansell managed to set a jaunty, casual pace throughout the entire book. Pacing is a huge factor in my enjoyment of a book! Spanning the time frame of a year, the story covered each character from multiple POV and was delightfully easy to read. There weren’t any instances where I felt myself zone out or become tired with the story, as can happen quite often to me with these types of books.

Mixed Doubles was a lively story that didn’t fail to completely shatter my heart near the end. It’s still a HEA but Mansell doesn’t seem inclined to hold back any while getting there. It was full of dramatic, yet realistic moments that picked up the pace consistently throughout the book. The only down side to that I found was one character (Dulcie) was responsible for majority of the drama – quite believably so, with her personality – yet I found myself quite disliking her for it. The book relied on her dramatic tendencies just a tad too much in my opinion and the story would have been better if she’d behaved more considerately toward others.

The other main characters, Pru and Liza were delightful to read about though and more than compensated for my dislike of Dulcie. Themes such as age gap relationships, dating after the loss of a loved one and second chance romances were explored. I adored how each character spoke to a different form of loving relationship and the book overall was a supportive take on how love is not only present in one shape or form, nor should it be.

Things weren’t easily fixed in this book and I really enjoyed how Mansell covered the ‘all you need is love’ aspect of a relationship. Rather than rely on love being the solution to all things, she explored how despite love being present some relationships just don’t work. At least not until underlying issues are dealt with. It was a decidedly honest, authentic approach to a chick-lit novel and made the endings seem realistic. I totally bought the final HEAs as the characters had genuinely had to work for them!

I’ll definitely be reading more by this author in the future!

Jill Mansell always provides a simple and enjoyable read.... the characters are always well developed and has the ability ti make you feel like you get to know her characters and invested in the story.

Wonderful Brit Lit! Loved the LOL funny side of this book, loved the brit vocab (and I'll apologize right now if I slip into that while talking now 😂) but I also enjoyed the "real life" stories here. Three women, relationships, marriage, divorces, hold on one divorce, age differences, and more. There was a lot going on but it wasn't "too busy" and it kept me reading page after page to see what was going to happen next 😁

I like Women's fiction and I have read books by this author in the past but this wasn't my favorite of hers. It seemed more "Chick-lit-ish" and less Women's fiction. Most of the characters were shallow and not really likable or maybe it is just me as I'm older than these characters. lol

I agree with others that it seemed dated, if it was going to be re-released it would have been a good idea to update it to make it more inline with current day like other authors have done when re-releasing past books.

It probably was my kind of book back whenever it was originally released, but I was much younger then too and probably just as shallow and stupid as these characters were and my reading tastes have changed over the years.

Mixed Doubles is a fast, light read. It has multiple story lines as the reader follows the lives of close friends. Thank you to NetGalley.

I'll lead this off by saying that I really like Jill Mansell, generally, especially her newer books. However this one is a re-release from the late 90s, and it just feels dated.

Three best friends end their year together sharing their resolutions. One wants to stay married (even though her husband is a jerk, a gambling addict, and a cheater,) one wants to get divorced from her husband (because he's too boring and nice and works too many hours so she can be a member of the country club and go shopping all the time,) and the third just wants to meet someone and get married. None of them were very interesting, and instead the focus was on them filling a specific, predefined role rather than in creating a character that readers could relate to.

It's a basic chick lit/light romance book, very light reading, and the sexism was definitely kept in throughout, which is so much more obvious now than it used to seem. I'm looking forward to reading future new Jill Mansell books, but her older books definitely don't hold up over the decades as society has changed.

Not my favorite Jill Mansell book, it took me until the book was coming to the end to grab my interest. The three main characters are very unique in their personalities!
Overall, Mixed Doubles is a very light, cheesy read that has a happily ever after ending. If you are in the mood for this type of book, it will be a perfect read for you.
Thank you to NetGallery, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and give my honest review about this book.