Book Review - More Than Enough by Liza Hoeksma

Amazon UK

Title:  More Than Enough

Author: Liza Hoeksma

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Author provided review copy

Publisher: Self Published

Publication Date: 2nd March 2015

Rating: 4.5 Stars

When does a friendship become an affair? 

Katie is pregnant. Again. She loves being a mum but having three kids under the age of three may be more than she can handle. Thankfully her marriage is solid enough to withstand the blast. Or is it? With husband Anthony working long hours and Katie fearful of letting him see she’s struggling to cope, could someone else become a shoulder to cry on? What line does a seemingly innocent friendship have to cross to jeopardise a family’s future? 

Meanwhile Katie’s sister Amy has problems of her own. Her 20s are fast disappearing with no sign of romance when along comes Charlie, an up and coming actor. Amy is smitten by Charlie (not to mention the world of celebrity he draws her into) and he seems to be falling head over heels too. But as Charlie’s star rises their relationship begins to change and Amy must work out if they want the same things. Will Charlie prove to be her perfect match? 

More Than Enough is a fabulous chick-lit book, it is humorous and entertaining, but also touches on some much more serious topics such as post-natal depression, loneliness, and coping with two children under 3 years old. 

Katie has just found out she is expecting her third baby, but she isn't exactly delighted with the news. Husband Anthony seems very excited, but Katie is struggling with her two children currently, with them both needing her constant attention, and both being under 3. She starts feeling very isolated and Anthony's long hours at work, don't help her in feeling much better.

 It is friend, to both of them,  Adam, who has just moved in, that catches Katie when she is feeling her lowest and gets her to talk. And from that a bond starts to grow. 

Then there is Amy, Katie's sister. She is fed up being single, and when she meets Charlie in a supermarket, she thinks her dreams have come true. He is an upcoming actor, working in a minor soap, and catapults her into a world of fine dining, expensive gifts, exclusive parties and generally the world of Celebrity. Charlie appears to be everything she has ever wanted in a man, but you need to read to find out if he really is too good to be true. 

The other main character we see a lot of is Amy's best friend Louisa, who is pregnant with her first baby. It is great to see how the friendship between Louisa and Amy changes and grows, once the baby is born. 

There are plenty of comic moments in this book, as well as quite a bit to think about. I loved reading about the various family and friendship dynamics that are in play, and whether any of the relationships would even last until the end of the book. 

I found Amy very easy, in some respects to relate to, since I am a single lady in her thirties, I know how the pressure feels to be in a relationship, or more the whole time, by people that aren't you. However Amy seems to think that you need to be with a man, in order to travel, or set up a business on her own and that screams to me that she was lacking in self confidence. 

Katie was lovely, but with her we also see her trying to bow to social pressures of being supermum, and I'm guessing that if you are a parent you will completely relate to her and how she is feeling. 

Overall I loved every second of More Than Enough, it kept me hooked throughout, and I almost missed my stop on the train, as a result of reading this on my commute.

Thank you so much to Liza Hoeksma for approaching me to read this book, and for the review copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and honest. 

If you didn't see it yesterday, I had Liza Hoeksma telling us about life in books that inspired her to become an author. Check it out here!

Guest Post - My Life in Five Books by Liza Hoeksma

All of us avid readers must get through thousands of books in our lifetimes but which stand out the most? I've often thought about my favourite five books, the ones that I have recommended, leant and bought for many friends, but having recently published my first novel I started thinking about which five books shaped me as a reader and as a writer…

Dogger by Shirley Hughes

They say you never forget your first love and mine was Dogger, a simple, sweet tale about a small boy, his beloved toy Dogger and his big sister Bella. It still brings a little lump to my throat when I read it to the little ones in my life. My parents are both big readers and indulged me in the way that good parents do by reading it to me over and over… and over again. 






Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery 

When I started reading by myself Anne of Green Gables quickly stole my heart. It may be old fashioned having been written in 1908 but that just shows that a really good story stands the test of time. L.M. Montgomery sweeps you up into Anne’s world that’s full of kindred spirits and poetic names like the Lake of Shining Waters. All the characters are beautifully drawn from the headstrong, romantic and adventurous Anne to her nosy old neighbour Rachel Lynde. And then there’s Gil of course; in my book he’s still fiction’s ultimate romantic hero. 




Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Studying this book at school sparked a change in the way that I looked at writing. My English teacher encouraged me to really study and analyse the text so, as well as being gripped by this  teenager’s tale of angst, I began to understand how rich the English language is and how using one word can dramatically alter a sentence and someone’s perspective of a situation. 







Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes

As a young adult I got stuck. There was nowhere near the quality of YA fiction then that there is now and I got out of the habit of always having a book on the go. Thankfully, in my early twenties, a friend leant me this Marian Keyes novel while I was on holiday and suddenly everything changed. Here were characters I could relate to, written in such an entertaining and gripping way that I couldn’t put the book down until I knew what had happened to them. That was the book that gave me back my reading mojo and opened me up to all the amazing fiction that was – and is - around for women. 

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

Since then I've I rarely gone a day without reading but after I finished Me Before You, and duly sobbed my heart out, I couldn’t look at another book for days. The thought of reading anything else felt like I would be cheating on Lou and Will; it would have been disrespectful to move on so quickly. As well as being one of those rare books that cracks your heart wide open, Me Before You also reminded me why I wanted to be a writer. It takes an issue that we often see in the news but that few of us have any real life experience of and makes you care, deeply. I love the power that story has to help us see a totally different perspective and get under the skin of a situation outside of our own lives. Great stories like this make you feel like you’ve known the characters involved and lived alongside them, feeling everything they feel.  

I also loved reading more about JoJo Moyes as a writer. I’d written two novels at this point and was getting great feedback from agents but none were in a position to represent me. When I read that JoJo Moyes had her first three books rejected, it really encouraged me to keep going. I've heard it said that dreams come true but they don’t come cheap; sometimes you just have to keep persevering before everything falls into place.

Author info

Liza’s first novel More Than Enough is out now on Kindle for Amazon, iBooks, Nook and Smashwords. She lives in Hertfordshire, works part-time for a charity, can easily lose hours on Pinterest and spends much of her life helping people spell and pronounce her Dutch surname (think Hook-smar).


Follow Liza on Twitter @LizaHoeksma






Thank you so much to Liza for this fascinating insight into her reading life. My review of More Than Enough will be posted tomorrow, so please come back to see what I think of Liza Hoeksma's debut novel.