In a small Cornish town, there's a lot of activity going on among the residents. Thanks to an adopt-a-granny initiative, 85-year-old Julia ends up 'adopting' her 110-year-old neighbour May who has a few magical secrets as to how she's reached the ripe old age. May starts helping Julia with a family mystery and soon enlists the help of Julia's granddaughter Emily from New York.

A lovely beachside setting and a somewhat magical twist, 59 Memory Lane has the ingredients for a lovely read and for some of it, it was but I couldn't help become a bit aggrieved over some things in the story that really irked me. I definitely enjoyed the older characters in this book - May and Julia who both have different stories (though they definitely weren't really delved into enough in my opinion) as well as Ida and Tristram.

I think the author really forced a lot of relationships on characters in this book and none of them felt particularly natural. It seemed like Andy had decided to woo Emily before she even stepped off the plane, and then most of their relationship was really petty fights and none of the romance seemed organic at all. It felt like a kid mashing her two Barbies together.

I also thought there was a definite problem in this book with a lack of follow-through. A lot of things were mentioned by characters and then just never brought up again which I found really odd. From the start of the book, May's aim was to get to her 111th birthday and while she had a lot of reservations about Julia's memories and her cause in it, there wasn't really an actual moment May decided she would give up on her goal. And then there was Striped and her kittens - it was so weird for me that there was a whole scene about orphaned kittens and everyone working together to help raise the kittens and then they were literally never mentioned again for the entire book?! What happened to the kittens!! 

There was also May's adoption storyline which honestly - I don't think needed to be in the book if nothing was ever going to come out of it. The same with a lot of relationships in this book - Emily's miscarriage (which she bounced back from really fast), her chicken pox a day after said miscarriage (come on) and her relationship with Max and all of that. Her relation ship with her boss also seemed really unrealistic. 100% bosses can be really nice but if I had one show up at my door when I had chickenpox and then call me 'sweetie.' Big nope. Also no way a publishing house would accept a major job change like that.

There was also really unnecessary female rivalry in this book with Candice who seemed to fancy Andy so had a thing against Emily. And the way everyone talked about Candice was really vile. I'm not here for girl on girl hate like that.

I definitely think parts of this book could have been good if some things were given more focus than others, and a lot of the unnecessary was stripped away. I feel like the author got too excited about all her characters and kind of wanted to do everything at once and it lacked a lot of finesse.