Chick Lit

The Undomestic Goddess

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by Sophie Kinsella

“There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.”

After reading them quite a while ago, I’m listening to all of Sophie Kinsella’s books on Audible. They have been even better than I remember thanks to the great narrators. They have wrung every little bit of comedy, wit, heart, and romance out of every one. And The Undomestic Goddess was no exception. When I first started to listen to it, I was a little put off because Rosalyn Landor, the first-person narrator, seemed too old and serious for a SK heroine. They are usually a little goofy and hapless. But as it turned out, as I got into the story, she was perfect.

As the book starts Samantha Sweeting is anything but a flakey but nice airhead. She is a brilliant corporate banking and contract lawyer, “one of the country’s top legal talents”. She is on track to achieve her lifelong dream: to be the youngest partner at the most prestigious firm in London. Until she does something she never does: she makes a mistake. And it’s a doozy, losing her firm £50,000,000. Thrown into disarray and disbelief, she leaves the office building in a trance and finds herself in the middle of the English countryside knocking on the door of a beautiful estate to ask for information as to where she is exactly. They mistake her for an applicant for their cook and housekeeper position, and Samantha, thanks to her ability to think on her feet (and lie), gets the job even though she has never cooked or done anything remotely domestic in her life. Earlier, when interrupted at her office by her cleaner asking where she keeps her vacuum cleaner bags, she wonders why one would want to put a vacuum cleaner in a bag. Where is she taking it? (she puts “order a new vacuum” on her to-do list since she has no idea and figures a new vacuum would come with a supply of bags. Problem solved! ) But she can fake it at the Geigers for a day or two. She only needs a place to stay until she figures out her next step forward.

But one thing leads to another and her break from the pressure-cooker existence at her firm does its good work. Despite stumbling around in the dark as far as her duties are concerned, she starts to enjoy her time and freedom.

“[When] you’re a lawyer at Carter Spink, you don’t sit around. Not when every six minutes of your time is worth money. If I let six minutes of time tick away, I’ve lost the firm £50. Twelve minutes, £100. Eighteen minutes, £150. And the truth is, you get used to measuring your life in little chunks. And you get used to working. All the time.”

Her disastrous adventures doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning are hilarious, and still more hilarious is how she bluffs her way through her ignorance of all things domestic and worms her way into the hearts of her employers and visa versa. They think she is the best housekeeper they have ever had! Thanks to the cooking and cleaning lessons of the gardener Nathaniel’s warm and wise mother, she actually starts to enjoy the work and becomes pretty good at it. She doesn’t have a genius I.Q for nothing, though she has to take great pains to hide it.

As the days go on, she and Nathaniel, who also owns 3 pubs and hates lawyers, fall in love and Samantha starts to become part of the community.

…I’ve learned a different way to live. I do my day’s work, and I finish—and that’s it. I’m free. I don’t need to take paperwork home. I don’t need to have my BlackBerry switched on twenty-four/seven. I can go to the pub, I can make weekend plans, I can go and sit in the garden for half an hour with my feet up—and it doesn’t matter. I don’t have that constant pressure anymore. I’m not stressed out. And it suits me. It’s like … The Waltons.

But one day she sees something on the internet which causes her to realize that she is possibly innocent of the mistake she was accused of, but was framed. The last part of the book concerns her, at first, almost hopeless efforts to clear her name. The triumphant yet troubling aftermath causes her to come to a fork in the road as to her career and future life.

I can’t emphasize strongly enough how much Rosalyn Landor’s interpretation added welcome layers to this book. The tension between Samantha’s mature serious tones while being driven into consternation and bemusement by her own incompetence and her employers’ antics are priceless. We are privy to her frequent and panic-stricken inner loss of poise while never losing her calm, competent, and collected exterior in front of the Geigers. The voices she gives to the snobby but good-hearted Trish and Eddie capture them perfectly. In fact, every character is a gem. Sophie Kinsella is always funny but this one seemed to have more than its fair share of emotional and poignant moments.

I’ve read that Sophie Kinsella is very ill but currently in stable condition. I am so grateful for the many hours of joy and delight she has given me and will continue to give me even if she never writes another new book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Sunny Days and Sea Breezes

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by Carole Matthews

Despite its gooey title, this is the Carole Mathews novel I chose to read in my occasional and hopeful search for another go-to auto-buy romantic comedy/women’s fiction author to add to my never-fail usuals. (Note the blurb by one of my faves.) It was well-reviewed and highly touted, being the winner of the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Romantic Novel of the Year Award (2021)

It started out promisingly. I do not mind a leisurely pace and it was gently amusing. The heroine, Jodie, seemed pretty likable and sympathetic. We meet her on a ferry to the Isle of Wight. She is going to stay for a while on her dear brother’s houseboat which is a gol-darned fantasy abode come true. She is looking for peace and quiet and to escape from London and some unnamed mysterious tragedy. We also learn pretty quickly that she thinks her husband is cheating on her, probably, though he denies it. But his suspected cheating is not what causes her to run away, but just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

We were both happy. We laughed at our friends whose social lives ended when they started to have families and had sleepless nights to contend with,  issues with babysitters, or the onslaught of unexpected fevers, tummy upsets, coughs, and colds. We were smugness incarnate. How I  now hate Past Us.

Uh Oh.

It’s nice to hear the gentle shush of the waves, but the caw of the gulls sounds too much like a crying child and I wish they’d be quiet.

Double Uh Oh.
So it has something to do with a child. At first, I was intrigued and interested to keep reading. But finally, especially as the book is written in first person, Jodie starts to sound coy about it. The secret tragedy is built up to the point that when, over 40% in, when she finally reveals it, it was an anti-climax. I was imagining so much worse. It exacerbated my growing disapproval and impatience with the heroine that we are meant to be rooting for. She’s a little too sorry for herself. When she finally spills the beans she does it by breaking the fourth wall with the reader.

I might as well be straight with you as I can’t go on like this. You know that I’ve lost a baby, don’t you? I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that there was more to my flight than an errant husband….

I’m sorry that I’ve been keeping it from you, but I can’t even vocalise it. I had months of people – friends, and colleagues – looking at me with pity and I couldn’t bear it any longer.
I can’t tell you anymore.

By this time, I was like, “Please don’t. You’ve said more than enough. You don’t know me and I don’t like you all that much either. Please don’t speak to me again” (She ignored my request)
I didn’t like how she was treating her husband and her best friend who were worried sick about not knowing where she was or how she was doing. Given her depressive state, they probably feared the worst. Many many calls and texts just ignored (17 in one day). I didn’t like how she just did a runner. What would it have cost her to sit down and try harder to get to the bottom of the suspected cheating and her problem with his reaction to “the tragedy.” She could have told him she was leaving and why, to leave her alone, that she needed time, etc., etc. I mean, fight fair.
No shocker, she starts crushing on the younger guy in the houseboat next door and his “abs on abs on abs”. Talk about hypocritical. He is a good man and pretty smitten with the older vulnerable woman. They finally do the deed but she neglects to tell him she is a married woman which comes as a bad shock to the poor guy who has his standards.

Plenty of other things about Jodie and her situation got my goat, but that’s enough. I won’t pile on. Everything else about the book I liked pretty well, specifically the character of Marilyn who is her housekeeper and takes Jodie in hand and helps her. She is a force of nature: exuberant, loud, colorful, and cheerful despite the tragedy she has had in her own life (which was much worse than Jodie’s.) Her malapropisms provided a steady stream of smiles. I also liked the setting and the writing was easy and well done. I even liked the way she telegraphed the “big twist” which at least created some anticipation for the big reveal. Just was not enamored with our first-person narrator/heroine, and that was a hard hurdle to jump over.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Simply the Best

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by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The Python stopped by the table. “Let’s do a roundup here. Your top client is charged with murder, his mother is crawling on the floor doing cleanup, his sister has been working her ass off in your kitchen when she should have been a guest, and topping it all off, Tyler Capello—a player you have not signed—shows up at your party with his slimy ex-agent who sets your place on fire. Is that about right?” He punched out the words. “Am I missing anything?” The River was never at a loss for words. Until now.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips is an automatic buy for me both for loyalty’s sake and because even her lesser books are always enjoyable on the whole. There are always hours of entertainment to be had. Nevertheless, I opened this book with a bit of trepidation. She has not been as consistent lately. Also I’m a lot pickier about chick lit than I used to be. I’m much less about the romance and the usual tropes these days. But SEP always delivers effortless humor, and is such an engaging writer, that she drew me right in like the premier Rom-Com writer she is. I was happily reading along thinking how similar this was to one of her best books, Match Me if You Can, when I realized that I really didn’t like the main character, Rory. Not a good thing. She was a brat. And to make it worse, SEP seemed to think that just because Rory is  self-aware and acknowledges her brattiness to herself, it somehow excuses her behavior and makes her more likable. Not to me. She does this throughout the book, until she finally actually ratchets down her nonsense and starts to get it together.

Rory has always felt “less than” thanks to her father and stepmother who always put her down and compared her to their perfect son, her half-brother, Clint. He is now a star football player playing for the Chicago Stars and a client of Brett, a sports agent who works for Heath Champion “The Python”, the hero of the aforementioned Match Me if You Can. Clint is infatuated with a beautiful shallow gold digger and is on the outs with both Rory and Brett because they tried to tell him the truth about her. Early in the book (slight spoiler), Ashley is murdered and Clint disappears. This is ample excuse to throw the two leads together to solve the murder, find Clint, and needless to say, fall in lust, then love, as is usual in this genre. While driving together to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I was irritated by Rory and Brett’s totally gratuitous encounter with some survivalist conspiracy theory MAGA types. Although played for laughs, it wasn’t that funny and served no purpose but to give the author the excuse to vent her rage against these people and to espouse her views on true patriotism. Even though I largely agree with her, I just wanted to tell her to settle down. One sided portrayals do more harm than good. I waited in vain for some balance. She included a similar group in an earlier book, but they were well-rounded and had some relevance to the plot.

I didn’t enjoy the banter that SEP is so good at as much as I usually do because most of it was based on Rory’s unnecessarily rude comments and it made me dislike her even more. About halfway through, Clint is found and, Whoops! Strike three. I despised him even more than Rory. I hope SEP does not use Clint as the hero of her next Chicago Stars book because, like his sister Rory, he was a brat.* In his case, he was a petulant spoiled whiny brat. It was disappointing because he was described by all and sundry in the highest possible terms as honest, moral, talented and smart. Wish we had seen that side of him much sooner than we did. As it was, it was too little too late.

Thank Goodness it is about at this time that Rory has an epiphany and starts to behave in a more mature manner.

Sitting here surrounded by gravestones, she saw the truth. She didn’t have the guts to put herself on the line. Big dreams without follow-through was her mode, and the reason was blindingly clear. As long as she didn’t really try, she didn’t have to risk failing.

Throughout most of the book, she refuses to accept any financial help from all of the rich people in her life to pull herself out of her debt and start realizing her dream of making chocolate for a living. She finally realizes that instead of accepting charity, she can accept money as an investment in her business. That bright idea took a lot longer than it should have considering the desperate straits in which she had found herself. We know what a genius she is at her craft thanks to all of the chocolate porn. Unfortunately, about the time Rory and Clint start to get less irritating, our hero, Brett, who I hadn’t had any problems with, turns into a stalker. When Rory confronts him about his feelings towards her, he blows it and won’t admit that he loves her. (Possibly because he doesn’t know he’s in love with her, which is another Chick-Lit trope I am so tired of). Rory rightly tells him to get lost. And he. Will. Not. Leave. Her. Alone.

In the middle of all this Rory’s stepmother appears on the scene and, as I suspected, she is not the evil witch that Rory had made her out to be. I liked her romance with an on-the-spectrum nerdy guy although it was still very trope-y. What about Ashley’s real killer? You may well ask. I won’t say who it was but it was extremely lame. Probably #1 on the list of Things Not to Do in a murder mystery.

All in all, despite SEP’s writing talent and humor, I felt like her heart wasn’t really in this one. It had too much in common with Match Me if You Can (quirky feisty girl meets Master of the Universe) With some plot things thrown in and some subtracted to make it just different enough. But Susan Elizabeth Phillips is still on my automatic buy list. Because the good thing about inconsistency is that if an author’s latest book is a disappointment, that means that maybe her next one will be great. But please, Elizabeth, can we just have a heroine with a normal profession next time? How about a teacher or an accountant instead of a matchmaker, opera singer, puppeteer, portrait painter, Genius Physics Professor, Televangelist’s widow, former child star (twice), First Lady of the United States, etc. etc.?

*Unfortunately this is exactly what SEP did. I will still read it, but will be getting this from the library. First time I haven’t been first in line to purchase for 25 years.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Strange Bedpersons

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By Jennifer Crusie

Jennifer Crusie is always a reliable purveyor of fun and funny contemporary romances. Her interesting and likable characters, effortless humor, and the ever popular “witty banter” cast most of her contemporaries and successors in the shade. Her heroines never get stuck in their own heads to avoid moving forward solely as an author’s device to create conflict. To my memory, I’ve never silently screamed in frustration at the stubborn stupidity of a Jennifer Crusie character. This book is an early one from 1994 and was originally published by Harlequin as one of their Temptation series of romances.

Tess is a liberal-minded do-gooder who was raised in a hippie commune. She doesn’t care about social status or money. She shops at thrift stores and is a teacher of needy children. When the book opens she has just broken up with Nick who is her opposite in every way. He is a conservative lawyer in an elite if stodgy “old money” firm whose #1 goal in life is to make partner. Tess has just lost her teaching job because the school just lost its funding. The key to Nick realizing his ambition is to land the account of a famous conservative author at an exclusive weekend house party. In order to project stability and the traditional values that are so prized by his firm, he invites Tess to pose as his fiance. Why the opinionated free spirit Tess of all people? Because she actually reads books and despite their differences he really loves her. She feels the same and conveniently is motivated to behave and keep her opinions to herself because a potential new employer will also be in attendance. She figures she can teach the rich kids for a much higher salary and better hours and then volunteer at the foundation which was forced to let her go. But can she restrain her propensity to speak her mind and be the demure, conventional, and proper fiance?

In the course of the book, both Tess and Nick learn to respect each other’s values with some bumps along the way. Their second chance romance is satisfying if predictable. A secondary romance between her best friend Gina, an Italian professional dancer and Nick’s best friend Park, the scion of the family firm that Nick works for provides most of the suspense and surprises. Park is somewhat of a dim-bulb and playboy who is firmly under the thumb of his snobby and judgemental parents. They definitely would not approve of high school dropout Gina, if Park had the guts to introduce her, that is.  Into the mix there is a little mystery involving Tess’s upbringing in the commune, the far-right author, and how he got his filthy hands on  a series of fairy tales that were written for Tess one summer by a wise visitor who became somewhat of a mentor and father-figure to the young girl. There was a plot twist I didn’t see coming and a very funny and climactic family dinner that ultimately leads to comeuppances, rewards, happy endings, and justice for all.

It’s a 3 1/2 star unpretentious frothy read. But I bumped it up to 4 stars for the sake of one character: Nick’s personal assistant, the cool, collected, and ultra-competent Christine. She is Nick’s secret weapon who knows all, sees all, and sometimes deigns to save the day.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Watermelon

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By Marian Keyes

“Temporary Insanity had come a-knocking and I had shouted “Come on in the door is open.” Luckily, Reality had come unexpectedly and found Temporary Insanity roaming the corridors of my mind unchecked, going into rooms, opening cupboards, reading my letters, looking in my underwear drawer, that kind of thing. Reality had run and got Sanity. And after a tussle, they both had managed to throw out Temporary Insanity and slam the door in his face. Temporary Insanity now lay on the gravel in the driveway of my mind, panting and furious, shouting, “She invited me in, you know. She asked me in. She wanted me there.”

I’ve been re-reading Marian Keyes’s books on Audible for the last couple of years. They have been so rich and funny. I had only read Watermelon, Keyes’s introduction to the Walsh family, one time, and it was a long time ago. I remember not being too impressed with it.
I re-read Rachel’s Holiday (again) in 2022 in preparation for its long-anticipated sequel, Again, Rachel. I had previously listened to Helen’s story, The Mystery of Mercy Close, in 2020, and somewhere in there  Mammy Walsh’s A-Z of the Walsh Family, because I felt the need to re-acquaint myself with Helen and the rest of them. In those latter books, Claire is an interesting but not particularly nice woman. In fact, she is rather unlikable. Not so in this one. I was amazed by how different she is in this first book from how I remembered her. Perhaps because I listened to it on Audible rather than read it, I loved Watermelon this time. I thought it was hilarious and engaging throughout. Part of this may have been the narrator’s charming Irish accent and inflections which made Claire, who narrates her story in first person, even more sympathetic and charming than on paper. I was rooting for her all the way. Another reason I was so taken with her was that she addresses the reader directly in a metatextual way which made me feel a personal connection to her.

This is not a plot-driven book. The book begins with Claire, having just given birth, being told by her husband while she is still in the hospital, that he is leaving her for another woman.

Who’s in charge around here? I’d like to complain about my life. I distinctly ordered a happy life with a loving husband to go with my newborn baby and what was this shoddy travesty that I’d been served up instead?

From there, we go with her on her journey from grief and devastation, confusion, and anger to healing and a fresh start with a new and wonderful man. But first, she leaves London and goes home to Dublin to live with her parents and two of her sisters, Helen and Anna, who still live at home. The book mainly consists of Claire’s musings, observations, and memories. As she remembers it and tells it, her marriage with James was blissful, and James, as she remembers him to us, seems like a great guy and her perfect match. Until he finally shows up, that is. We see that he is actually a pompous sanctimonious pig. For me, this added an extra layer of interest because I started to wonder about Claire’s reliability as a narrator if not her sanity. Or does James have a point when he accuses her of being childish, selfish, and a total flake? Claire had expected regret and shame from James but instead, he actually blames her for his having the affair. At first, James has Claire completely gaslighted. She starts to believe him and he has her under his thumb with her apologizing to him and promising to change her ways to save their marriage. Luckily her delusion was very brief and she comes to her senses with a vengeance.

No more humiliation for me, thanks very much. No more swallowing my anger. Honestly, I couldn’t manage another mouthful.

In many of her later books, Marian’s heroines are victimized and bamboozled by bad men throughout the whole book. I was thrilled such was not the case with Claire. She pretty much sees him for what he is, but is very confused and she feels she has to try again for the sake of their baby.

I loved the character of Adam, Claire’s love interest. He is such a great guy that the fact that he loves and admires Claire serves to reassure us that however flawed and crazy she sometimes is, she is a lovable and good person. Their romance is sweet, as is her love for her baby Kate. And of course, the rest of the Walshes are a constant source of entertainment and amazement.

Next to read on my agenda is Angels, which features Margaret, the “good” sister, who was not in this one. After that, hippy-dippy druggie Anna’s story, which I remember as being heartrending, and then a re-read of scary and combative Helen’s story. It will be interesting to meet Claire again in those and see how (or if) she changes or if this book is just another side of her.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Spin

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By Catherine McKenzie

“So, most days you need something to make you feel happy?” I knew it was a trick! “I guess.” “And if you weren’t drinking, would you be unhappy most days?” My eyes wander to the oblong window above Saundra’s head. The sky is gray and cloudy. “I don’t know . . . I really don’t think of myself as unhappy . . .” “Katie, when you’re using alcohol regularly to alter your mood, it’s generally an indication that there’s something that needs to be altered.”

This one started out full of promise and possibilities, and very reminiscent of Rachel’s Holiday, the almost classic Marian Keyes novel. But because I couldn’t help but compare them, it was ultimately disappointing. Rachel’s Holiday was so deep, dark, and hilarious. There were definitely some good things about this one. The premise was a great idea and roped me in right away.

Kate, a talented but struggling writer is in denial about her alcoholism. When she is invited to interview for a position in a respected music review magazine, The Line, she is thrilled. This is her dream job. She is invited by a friend to go out to celebrate this and her upcoming birthday the night before the interview. She puts up a weak resistance knowing she has to be on her game for the interview, but goes out anyway for “just one drink.” She shows up at the interview still drunk from the night before and simultaneously hung over. I’ll draw a veil. But when Amber Shepard a young star and current tabloid fodder enters rehab, they remember Kate. One of The Line’s affiliates is a celebrity gossip rag and they tap her to follow Amber into rehab to get the goods on the young erratic “It Girl.” If she does a good job, The Line will hire her for their magazine.

Written in first person by Kate, it was funny, serious, and well-written. I liked her voice. But the book doesn’t go deep enough. It’s kind of vague about many things. For example, how much does Kate really drink? We know it’s a lot. She randomly tells the doctor she drinks 2 bottles of wine every day which is what she guesses would qualify to get her into Cloudspin Oasis, the rehab facility, but is she lying or telling the truth? Kate is a liar about many things. It would have been effective if we find out that Kate is either lying to the reader, or if the reader is clear about the truth.  We meet a few of the patients but we never get their journeys. They really don’t add anything to the story. Of course, get to know Amber as Kate is successful in befriending her and gaining her trust. Amber is a good character, but Kate is warned not to let her get too close because she is dangerous. That knowledge keeps us suspicious and watchful of Amber, but nothing really plays out.

Amber is famously entangled with Connor Parks, another hot movie actor who plays the Young James Bond in a movie franchise. He follows her to rehab (why?) and it is when he enters the scene, about halfway through, that I started losing interest. It was one inauthenticity too many. First off that would never be allowed.  Things became just so facile and contrived. Connor has a personal assistant who is allowed to enter rehab with him to look after him. What? Wouldn’t happen. He is Kate’s love interest and boring. I just can’t invest in a romance where the guy is an enabler of a bad person and addict just because he is an old-school friend. It conflicts with his character big time. The “why” of their relationship is a mystery and could have been intriguing but ended up to be more unexplored potential.  Kate is able to smuggle in an Apple iTouch to submit copy to the gossip rag and is never caught. Wouldn’t happen. The doctors and therapists are naive and gullible. They seem incapable of holding anyone’s feet to the fire. There is no meaningful therapy that goes on. We never really get to the source of Kate’s addiction. Her friends, both enabling and disapproving, visit her but nothing comes of it. There was some hope when Kate’s eccentric and permissive old hippie parents were introduced. Failing anything interesting happening with her friends, I was hoping for some drama, revelations, and secrets uncovered involving them but it just fizzled as well. It looked like something might come of her relationship with her hostile and jealous sister, but again it came to nothing. We never get to the pain. Once Kate is out of detox which if Kate is anything to go by is no big deal, there are no struggles stemming from being cut off from alcohol and forced sobriety. When she finishes her 30 days and is released there is no real battle to remain sober. She does fall off the wagon once but just climbs back on again and all is well. Easy peasy.

Once out of rehab and sober, Kate does have one problem. How can she betray Amber who she likes and is now her friend? This is what triggers her short relapse. And then Amber finds out. This part of the book, the last 20% or so, where Kate’s dilemma is resolved in a satisfactory way, is pretty good.

I gave the book 3 stars because I kept reading and didn’t end up skipping through to get to the end. It kept my interest, but it just didn’t fulfill the potential that it promised in the beginning. For such a long book, it took too many shortcuts.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

The Wedding Season

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By Katy Birchall

When you get dumped the day before your wedding in a broom cupboard, suddenly everything seems a bit shit.

“Look, Freya, this is kind of what I’m talking about. We don’t … mesh well anymore. You’re so pragmatic all the time. So together. Which is great. For you. But I’m, you know—” He searched for the words. “—I’m all over the place. Temperamental. Emotional. We can’t be good for each other. We just can’t. We don’t make sense.”

At last, a straight-up rom-com/chick-lit novel ala Sophie Kinsella that I really liked without reservation. It was effortlessly funny and romantic yet with just the right amount of seriousness and depth. Our heroine, Freya, is delightful and not a victim but with enough flaws, foibles, and insecurities to make her someone you can relate to and give her a path for personal growth.

In the first couple of pages, Freya is dumped by her fiance on the day before their wedding. To make this even more devastating, they have been together for 10 years, their lives are closely intertwined, and her family has spent a lot of money. It was to be a very big wedding. There is one side issue about this that I have to get off my chest. Nowhere is it mentioned that Matthew paid her back for the money spent. He cost her a lot of money by leaving it to the last minute to call off the wedding. And Freya or her family should have asked him to pony up. Anyway, Freya is heartbroken, stunned, and crushed. She really loved him. The objective reader knows that she dodged a bullet, but it takes much of the book for Freya to see Matthew and his actions clearly. It would have been easy for Katy Birchall to make him a real jerk and villain. But she makes it clear that he is essentially a good guy, but weak and immature. But She reveals this subtly and gradually while still giving him enough lovable qualities that we don’t question Freya’s sanity for being with him for 10 years and heartbroken at his loss. I appreciated this. Too often I start to dislike heroines I’m meant to root for because they are so clueless and blind to the vileness of the men they are married to or in love with.

The book is centered around a string of eight weddings that Freya and Matthew were meant to attend together as a married couple. Her best friends, another couple, devise a plan to keep her out of the dumps during this “Wedding Season” that will call up such pain and humiliation for her. They give her a task for her to accomplish at each wedding and it is one that will be a challenge for her being the kind of girl she is and help her to step out of her comfort zone. For example, she has to stand up to give a toast to the bride and groom when she is a terrible public speaker. Or Be the last one standing on the dance floor when she is reserved and not a good dancer. By the end of the book, she is well and truly over Matthew, in love with a great guy that we love too, and improbably reconciled with her estranged mother.

The way the book is plotted kept me always looking forward and engaged in Freya’s journey. There were so many opportunities for humor and drama. The romance was perfect. Her family and all of her friends were entertaining, supportive, and loving. And Matthew gets his comeuppance in a very satisfying fashion. And she didn’t stint on her mother being rightly told off either with the result that she finally takes responsibility for her actions. Lots of Catharsis. My only disappointment was that the author has written only 3 other adult novels, and I had already read one of them which I hadn’t realized! I was disappointed that I had to give that one 4 stars and was so happy that this one was a 5-star read.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The Burnout

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By Sophie Kinsella

“Don’t worry,” I say hastily. “It’s fine.”
“It is not fine.” He shakes his head mournfully. “It is far from fine. These are not the high standards we expect of ourselves at the Rilston. We have let you down and we have let ourselves down….
“Believe me, Ms. Worth, I am mortified by our failure. I will get you that noni juice, if I have to squeeze the noni myself.” “Well…thank you,” I say, feeling embarrassed….
“Other than that, has your stay been comfortable so far? You’re here for a health break, I understand? Ah, here’s Nikolai with your green smoothie,” he adds. “In the absence of organic kale, our chef used frozen Birds Eye peas.” Birds Eye peas?

This was a delightful and entertaining new Sophie Kinsella, just not my favorite. I liked the premise and the romance. As usual, although portraying women, their foibles, and ultimate healing and triumph is her specialty, she always creates a romance with a worthy and intriguing hero. This one was no exception. I loved both Sasha and Finn. And as always, there were plenty of laughs and plenty of heart. Kinsella’s humor is effortless. And our heroine was not the silly flake on the edge of disaster that so many of her women characters are through many of her books.

Oh, she starts off pretty crazy. Sasha works at a prestigious and successful company in the marketing department. Unfortunately, it is very poorly run which is frustrating to her, and poor management has resulted in much work and too little time to do it. To add to her stress, she has to answer to Joanne, her boss’s henchwoman, whose main priority is an “aspirations mood board” and insists that she must use the little time she has to “find her joy”. Or else. When Sasha finally breaks down in a panic attack, it is both funny and alarming. She tries to join the convent next door and knocks herself out by literally running into a brick wall. Put on medical leave by her doctor, she retreats to a haven of her childhood, Rilston Beach, of which she has so many happy memories. Her mother books her a room in the formerly fabulous and elite Rilston Hotel, which was far above her family’s touch when they spent their summer vacations in the town. But it is the off-season. And I mean off in more ways than one. There at the all but deserted hotel, she meets a fellow sufferer from burn-out, Finn Birchall. And as usual in a Kinsella novel initial antipathy and misunderstanding eventually turns to friendship and then love. Along the way, they make friends with the quirky and endearing skeleton staff of the once glamorous resort hotel, some of the townspeople, and most importantly the beloved and legendary surf instructor, Terry, who is now sadly suffering from dementia in his old age. And we get a mystery or two to keep things chugging along.

Unfortunately, the ending was a disappointment. Oh, it was a happy one of course. But it was just too pat and easily won. The reader is prepared for a real struggle that Finn is going through between a painful breakup with his girlfriend of 10 years and his new relationship with Sasha. We are led to believe it was the reason for his freak-out at work. Sasha learns about this through a rather sketchy action on her part. Usually, when our heroine does something she should probably be ashamed of (like spying or lying) she gets caught out, and embarrassed, and it causes a big problem with the hero. But refreshingly, Kinsella does not rely on this cliched cause of drama. I was very relieved. But in the end, we learn that the break up with his ex-girlfriend was not such a big deal after all. His heart is free. The whole problem which separated them for 6 months was just glossed over with no explanation. Even though his 10-year relationship with his ex, Olivia, was all but forgotten (I guess), he kept it a secret from Sasha for some mysterious reason. Actually, we don’t know if he went through any pain at all over it. It seems like it must have been pretty traumatic going by Olivia’s Instagram that Sasha understandably pours over. Was she the lovely woman that she seems? Did their lives take different directions and they just each agreed to move on with no drama? Was it something more hurtful or shocking? Or was it just that her Instagram was not an accurate portrayal of their lives together at all? This was the theme of the last Kinsella novel I read, My Not So Perfect Life.
We are left in the dark, and I don’t like being left in the dark. It didn’t ruin the book, but it was just so confoundedly weird and unnecessary.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Codename Charming

/ Rebekahrox / 2 Comments

by Lucy Parker

What a disappointment! I really like Lucy Parker. Love her, even. I’ve only given one of her books 3 stars rather than 4 or 5 and that was the first one in this very series, Battle Royal. I think there is more than one reason why this one did not engage me. While reading the book, at about 40% mark, I realized I was bored and not enjoying it. As I went through, I gave this a lot of thought. Which just emphasizes how disengaged from the story I was, I guess. I loved the atmosphere and setting of her London Celebrities series which was set in the West End of London. The banter was literate, sparkling, and sharp as one would expect from sophisticated and worldly theatre types. It all seemed very authentic and I felt immersed in that fascinating and glamorous world. They were not cheesy. This spin-off from Battle Royal takes on the story of Pet, Gus’s sister, and the bodyguard who was on duty when Johnny Marchmont was attacked and Pet saved him from serious injury. Johnny is the sweet and shy fiance` of a princess in a fictional royal family in nonfictional England who “has two left feet, one of which was usually lodged squarely in his mouth.” In this book, Johnny and Princess Rosie are happily married and Pet has become his personal assistant.

Somehow the tabloid press has latched on to the idea that Johnny and Pet are having an affair. To counter that, the palace cooks up a fake romance between Matthias, Johnny’s bodyguard, and Pet. I think the book relied too much on the readers being sufficiently entertained by the eccentricity and glamour of the main and surrounding characters being royalty or royal insiders. There is some entertainment value there, as most of the family members we meet are quirky, and the constant battle with the “Paps” and other elements of life amongst the Royals are vaguely interesting. But, besides the progression of the romance, there really isn’t much of a secondary plot to add mystery or suspense or drama, as with her other novels. There is a small subplot of Pet learning of her real parentage, but this didn’t seem all that important or put very much at stake. Another about the tortured past of Matthias was just the same old-same old. Much of the situational humor seemed contrived. The hiding in the closet while the Spanish ambassador’s husband and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were having sex went on For-Ev-Er. To say nothing of the parrot.

The main idea of the romantic relationship is that Pet is a “human sunbeam” and very tiny pretty pixie-girl and Matthias is a brawny, hulking, ”ugly”, and taciturn. Unlike Lucy Parker’s other couples, who all had their careers and social circles in the same rarefied world, these two have nothing in common other than described-in-great-detail trauma in their past. This does not lead to a lot of sparkling conversation and witty quick banter that was such an attraction in her other books. And the size thing was way overdone to the point it became almost cartoonish. We just have a lot of physical attraction and a lot of inner dialogue and musings about what lies beneath the surface. It goes on and on analyzing feelings and reviewing past interactions often in the middle of a conversation. One of them will make a comment and then “blah blah blah” and the response isn’t until pages later. This slows the book down to a crawl.

The Beauty and the Beast trope is usually a good one for me, and the love story might have earned at least 3 stars despite its problems. Unfortunately, the last book I read by her, Artistic License had the same exact theme. As far as the H/h’s physical appearance, personality, and the Hero’s business with the heroine it was practically a carbon copy. (He is a security specialist protecting a shy girl whose life is in danger). This isn’t Lucy Parker’s fault as this was a very early book she wrote under another name. I don’t blame her for reaching back across the years to borrow elements of an old plotline and trying to do it better. But she didn’t do it better. It was just unfortunate timing on my part. There are flashes of good funny writing in this, but sorry, most of the time it was just slow and boring for me, and even when I sped up my reading speed to the max, it seemed like it took forever to finish it.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

My (not so) Perfect Life

/ Rebekahrox / 2 Comments

By Sophie Kinsella

Original review: March, 2017.
Right up to Sophie Kinsella’s best work. As usual, Kinsella is a master at showing the characters and personalities of her players, not just telling you. It was very refreshing that she didn’t follow the usual “country good, city bad” cliche. I liked the message and it’s a welcome reminder, when, with social media, one thinks one knows a person and their life. Maybe you really don’t. **4 stars**

**Additional thoughts upon re-reading on Audible. 10/03/2023**
I am bumping this one up to 5 stars. First of all, the narration by Fiona Hardingham was funny and touching. I loved her Somerset accent and hearing it really highlighted the divide between country people and city people and the accompanying assumptions that are made. She made Katie so lovable, and her boss, Demeter, so layered. She was contemptible and admirable at the same time. What a character!

Katie is a farm girl raised by a single father who has made her way to London. To be a “Londoner” has been her dream. She works in an advertising agency, and though she is the low man on the totem pole, she is a tryer, and she has talent. To make a long story of her personal and professional struggles short, she gets laid off and is forced to return to the farm in disgrace. Not wanting to disappoint her loving Dad, she tells him and his second wife Biddy that she is on sabbatical. Her Dad and Biddy have decided to turn their farm into a “Glamping” site, and thanks solely to Katie’s guidance and marketing talent, it is a fabulous success.

Katie’s old London boss, Demeter, is a piece of work. Katie was a great admirer and thought that Demeter had the perfect life. Demeter is brilliant and creative (almost a legend in her field) but is totally disorganized, has no self-awareness, is a braggart, does not play well with others, and many other things. When she fires Katie in the most insensitive manner possible, Katie joins her former officemates in hating her guts. Then Demeter shows up at her family’s glamping site for a family vacation. And Katie starts to hilariously and cleverly wreak her revenge.

How she goes from being Demeter’s mortal enemy to her comrade in arms is as funny and entertaining as can be. Together, as an unlikely team, they turn each other’s trouble-filled and imperfect lives into darn near-perfect ones. I think Demeter is one of Sophie Kinsella’s most wonderful creations. And Katie’s journey is heartwarming and exhilarating. Of course, there is a romance for Katie, and, as usual, her love interest is appealing and a bit unusual with issues of his own.
This book is romantic comedy at its best. And a witty satire to boot.

Rating: 5 out of 5.