Only Dad - Alan Titchmarsh

Tom and Pippa are idyllically happy - since their first meeting they knew they were right for each other, and after almost twenty years together things are still really good. Their daughter, Tally, is approaching womanhood with applomb, the restaurant Tom runs with friend (and chef) Peter is successful, and the only nagging worry is that part of Tom wants to be a writer. Well, that and the fact that neither Tom nor Pippa like Peter's wife Rachel - she's a self-involved, superficial, pretencious shrew who's pushing Tom into a second restaurant even though the last time Tom and Peter tried branching out it was a failure.
When Pippa unexpectedly dies, everything changes - a sole parent in charge of a daughter with a life he knows nothing about, Tom is already off-balance when he's told at a dinner party that Peter and Rachel are determined to open a second restaurant. This is the impetus for him to take charge of his ow life - Tome shocks Peter and Rachel by telling them they can buy him out - he's going to be a writer.
I wish I could tell you what happens next, but frankly it was a massive effort just to make it to the midway point. From the first page Titmarsh's voice annoyed me, though I can't articulate exactly what it is that so grated. Here's an example:

You might surmise from this that Rachel was breathtakingly selfish. You would not be wrong. When it came to selfishness, Rachel Jago was an honours graduate.

Not wholly objectionable, you might think. But page after page of it just wore me down. Perhaps, had the characterisation been stronger or the plot more interesting, or the dialogue less stilted, the writing wouldn't have been an issue. But Pippa's death, the pivotal event that changes Tom and Tally's life from "being the envy of their friends" to them being "plunged into a world that nobody would wish upon them" takes forever to arrive (so long that I thought the title must not have been an unsubtle bit of wordplay).
There's not a single elements of Only Dad that I liked, so I cut my losses at the midway mark. Apparently a UK best-seller, Titmarsh's work is clearly popular with some, and good luck to them. For me, not so much. - Alex