All Together Now Blog Tour

All Together Now by Gill Hornby
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

A hilarious and heart-warming new novel about a small-town singing group, by Sunday Times bestseller Gill Hornby

The small town of Bridgeford is in crisis. The high street is half empty, businesses are closing and the idea of civic pride seems old-fashioned to the commuters rushing home from work. Somehow, it seems to have lost its heart.

But there is one thing that might just bring the town together: music. The Bridgeford Community Choir has a chance of winning the county championship. First though, the small band of singers must find a lot of new members and a whole new sound. Enter Tracey - one of life's soloists, and hiding a secret past; Bennett - a church choir refugee, baffled by the modern world. And Jazzy - who sees her voice as her passport straight out of town to a future of fame and fortune. Can they really fit in with dependable old regulars like Annie? Can they learn to work together, save their singing group and maybe even their community? 

All Together Now is a funny, sharply observed and moving novel about the joys of singing, about living in harmony, about falling in love... and about the importance of finding your own, true voice.

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All Together Now was not as easygoing to read as I had hoped for. Not that I didn't enjoy the book. I did like parts of the book. However, I also found the book a bit dry to read. Just not as funny and engrossing as I had hoped it to be. For instance, I had a pretty hard time getting into the book and enjoying all the different characters plight and quirkiness. But, somewhere along the way I started to enjoy the book more and more and some characters situations did come to intrigue and amuse me.  

For instance, I wasn't that interested in Bennett, but when he started the choir and started to change he suddenly becomes more interesting, the same thing happened with Tracey. What was her big secret and how come Bennett thought he recognized her from somewhere? And, then we have Annie, who to be honest could be a bit annoying in the beginning, but the more one got to know her the more one could see that this busybody also had her problems. And, the last part of the book was quite good, secrets were revealed, injustice was discovered and taken care of and the choir really started to become an important part in Bridgeford.

So, the book actually did turn out quite good, despite a slow start for me with some problem with the story and its characters. I even laughed out loud at one part towards the end of the book and I came to like the quirky characters in the choir.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book and for letting me taking part in the blog tour!