OK, I’m not proud. On holiday on a friend’s yacht in the Med, I was feeling somewhat superior in the face of said friend’s shelves and shelves of brainless crap (inch-high gold letters, words like protocol in the title) whilst ploughing my way through a worthy historical tome about Katherine Swynford (John of Gaunt’s mistress – to be blogged when ploughing is finished). Suddenly this piece of frippery caught my eye – all turquoise cover and ‘fun’ print – and I thought to hell with it, I’ll finish the worthy tome when I’m back in rainy old Inghilterra and spend my last day in the sun with some chick lit. And it’s been well worth it. There’s nothing like brainless crap when you’re on holiday. And actually this isn’t that brainless. It’s pacy, well-plotted in that ‘I’ll-give-the-reader-exactly-what-she-wants-after-I’ve-thrown-in-a-couple-of- red-herrings-and-a-twist’ kind of way and a most enjoyable way to spend one’s last day lounging about on the top deck though I do say so myself.
Becky Bloomwood is a compulsive shopper. She’s done it in London in The Secret Dreamworld Of A Shopaholic, does it in New York here and no doubt does it on the way to the altar in Shopaholic Ties The Knot. She’s also a comically inept financial adviser on Breakfast TV and the girlfriend of Luke Brandon who has his own successful PR company. All the usual stuff is here: chatty present-tense narration, ditzy but well-meaning heroine, lots of opportunities for said heroine to get into scrapes, heroine’s downfall due to shopping excesses, heroine’s redemption (but strictly on her own terms). It’s so lite you could soufflé it but no less entertaining for that. And since the boyf (my boyf, that is) spent the entire holiday reading inch-high gold-lettered conspiracy protocol ultimatum novs, it was time for the girlf to bite back.
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