The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

'So I buy it. The most perfect little cardigan in the world. People will call me the Girl in the Gray Cardigan. I'll be able to live in it. Really, it's an investment.'

Hello!

I've had this book on my shelf for a long time, and I read half of it once upon a time, but now I picked it up on BookBeat as an audiobook. Hooray!

The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic (hereafter just Dreamworld) is the first book in the very popular Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. The main character, Rebecca Bloomwood or just Becky, is a shopaholic - she loves shopping all too much, and she can't even actually afford it. She works for Successful Saving magazine, even though she doesn't really understand any of the financy things she works with. The rest of the story is really just about her mishaps, fighting evil Visa bills and trying to Save Less or Earn More.

Becky is a great character. She's like that impossible friend who always screws things up but whom you love regardless. Her internal monologue is very funny, and she never becomes unlikeable even when she's doing the exact things she should not be doing. I want to shake her, but I still could never dislike her.

Naturally, for me Becky's work in a financial magazine was really exciting. Even though this book is the epitome of chick lit, you could really tell Kinsella has a background in working as a financial journalist herself. These things were never dumbed down for the reader, even when Becky herself couldn't fully grasp them. I fully believe chick lit doesn't need to be dumb and ditzy just because it's meant to be fun and feminine, and I'm glad this book did exactly that. There's also a plot with a love interest, but that was never the whole overarching plot of the story.

Overall this book was better than I would have thought and I'm really glad I gave it a read. It wasn't quite 5/5 but regardless worth a read (though I'll admit it is defnitely not for everyone). Props also for the reader of the Finnish audiobook, Elsa Saisio. She was absolutely excellent and I believe she was actually Becky Blomwood. One big gripe I did have with this book is that it was clearly written with a sequel in mind; no matter what Becky grows through in this book, in the end she isn't allowed much character growth; instead she just remains the same person she was when the book started so that the sequel could keep the silly ditzy shopaholic she was in this one.

Also, as a side note; there's really something comforting for me about reading British books in Finnish. It's a bit hard to explain, but it makes me feel like maybe I'm not the only person ever to be living between these two countries. It makes me feel at home.

PS. These reviews are of books I read earlier in spring - missing between this one and the previous is The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli, because I honestly have nothing to say about that book. It was okay. Not my favourite by a mile.

Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

'9st 2, alcohol units 0 (v.g. Have discovered delicious new alcohol substitute drink called Smoothies - v. nice, fruity), cigarettes 0 (Smoothies removes need for cigarettes), Smoothies 22, calories 4265 (4135 of them Smoothies)'

Hello!

Bridget Jones's Diary is a novel by Helen Fielding that is, in essence, one of the chick lit books that defined what chick lit is. It came out in 1996 (a lifetime ago) and was probably a very new and fresh work at the time. Unfortunately, I think it's safe to say that time has not treated it well.

Bridget Jones is a 30-something single trying to find love in London, struggling with her weight, alcohol consumption and smoking. The book comprises of her diary notes over a year, starting with her New Year's promises. She's determined to make a change in her life this year, like all of us.

The book is often fun, but perhaps even more often it felt kind of uncomfortable. Whether it was men stepping over Bridget like she was thin air or her complaining about her weight while consuming 10 units of alcohol every day, the book was often giving me a sense of 'I'm not sure if I'm actually rooting for this'.

Bridget's mum was also an actually horrible human being, yet the book never states that she'll get what's coming for her. The acknowledgement in the book even says 'to my mum, for not being like Bridget's', so clearly the author realises this. And yet the story itself doesn't. Bridget's mum doesn't care for anyone but herself and yet expects everyone to love her. Ew.

Bridget herself doesn't get a super amount of character development, but I suppose, being a very comical book, it's not really aiming for that either. And she does, well, get a little bit better about her weight and stuff, I suppose...

The weight thing is crazy and honestly kind of repulsive. Bridget's weight teeters on both sides of 9 stone (that's 57 kilograms for those of us who don't understand this), which is really not much. She's definitely not fat. And I still understand Bridget wanting to lose weight, since most people do, but even those around her keep commenting on how fat she is. Fat, at 57 kilograms? This is absolutely not a healthy message to give to anyone, especially not the people who might relate to Bridget but weigh 10, 20 kilograms more than her. I know the beauty standards are not healthy for men either, but it's dangerous how we constantly tell women they can only be beautiful when they are starving, their ribs showing (all the while still retaining D-cup breasts).

On the other hand, it must be said for this book that it kept me reading, like chick lit at its best should. I never considered stopping it just because it was somehow so catchy. Maybe I also kept hoping the end would be so good I'd forgive the rest. It wasn't; the end was very rushed and when all the things I had wanted to happen happened within three pages and then the book ended, it just wasn't the emotional payoff I had been expecting from this.

Mark Darcy was one of the only things I actually, honestly and wholeheartedly liked about this book. He was precious the whole way through, awkward but charming. Also, I suppose I must mention that I enjoyed how English this book was. It makes me feel at home, every time. But yeah, this was a 3/5, wouldn't read again and probably won't read the next ones. Watch the movies instead. This time, I think they're actually superior.

Also, I couldn't place this in the Helmet 2017 reading challenge? What's going on? Have I actually... started to reach the end...?

After You - Jojo Moyes

‘I wore my old dresses, my brightly coloured cardigans and satin pumps, and let myself be enclosed in a bubble of happiness, aware that bubbles only ever existed for so long before they popped anyway.’

I said that I’d read this book, right? Well, I did. I didn’t like it. Prepare for me to rant about it. Also, if you haven’t read Me Before You and want to do so, I’d advise not to read this because… well, it’s the sequel. Apologies for pointing out the obvious. Also, you might be better off not reading this one if you thought Me Before You had an ending you liked, really.

The premise of After You is this: Louisa, after the heart-breaking loss at the end of Me Before You, just kind of stopped living. She tried to escape, lost touch with her family, moved to London and got another boring job after the boring job she has at the start of the previous book. Because try as she may, Louisa Clark is not a person to step out of her comfort zone even if threatened with a pickaxe (unless a hot guy practically forces her to). This changes when she a) falls from the roof (which, surprisingly, has pretty little actual value in the plot and serves more as a gimmick excuse for her to not go to the roof again without two pages of fear every bloody time) b) meets Lily and c) meets a hot guy.

I kid you not but all the other subplots in this book felt flat and uninteresting for me. Also, they were pretty unnecessary, because I was just looking forward to finishing the book. In short, Louisa gets a new hero complex and decides that since she doesn’t want to do anything with her life, she’s just going to take the responsibility of fixing other people’s. Yawn. I feel like I’ve read this before. Does she experience the personal growth I wanted? I don’t feel like she did. Moreover, the book is about healing after the loss of a loved one, of course. But where’s the growth?

I actually quite liked Lily’s character; she’s a wealthy brat, full of teenage entitlement and life and laughter and anger. She storms around and stalks around and brings actual emotions to where Louisa continues to be sad. She was probably the first character I actually liked in these two books, well, along with Nathan who has little to no skin around his bones. All in all, she was a pleasure to have around, at first anyway…

I feel the distant need to complain more fully so let me just say that from here -> on out I’m just going to spoil everything that annoyed me, which is most of the book, so…. If you’re interested in reading it (despite my warnings!!!) maybe stop here. Maybe, however, I can just save you the trouble by laying it out for you. Anyway, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

So anyway, of course when I liked Lily (who, by the way, is Will’s 16-year old daughter no one knew he had. Surprise! No but really, I was so unsurprised I thought I had already read that on the back cover), they had to screw that up for me by giving her a tragic backstory that mirror’s Louisa’s. At a party, she is drunk and is taken advantage of. It’s pretty boring and used to explain away her bratty behaviour – she’s just not in a good place. All in all it’s not a compelling plot detail and makes me sort of dislike her. Towards the end she also just up and leaves to live with her grandmother (Mrs. Traynor, yes) in what seems like a hasty, once microwaved but still lukewarm effort to explain everything away to be well.

This same working actually haunts most of the ending; it feels sloppy and quick and not at all like the end I wanted. After all the non-pleasant effort I went through while reading this book, I wanted to be rewarded with an epic end at least. Thanks for nothing, kind of.

Also, of course Ambulance Man Sam (he’s the love interest in this one) gets injured at the end in a faux-interesting near-death experience with didn’t feel like anything when I wasn’t invested in a) him and Louisa’s relationship or b) him as a character in general. The thing they had was built quickly out of pretty nothing but sex, and Louisa spent until this moment questioning it. She leaves for New York at the end of the book (for a job she almost didn’t take, which was when I almost bit her head off through my Kindle) and they think their relationship might last the distance. Spoiler alert, love: I don’t think so.

Additionally, there’s this incredibly weird subplot where Louisa’s mum, eternal housewife, has a “feminist awakening” of some sort and the other characters think she’s clearly off the handle for suddenly wanting a life of her own every now and then instead of taking care of everything 24/7, 52/12. What in the world? It also ends with Louisa’s father waxing his legs, at which point the mum decides that maybe this can work after all. It was all just incredibly weird, didn’t add to my experience and honestly made me feel uncomfortable at the patriotism that was touched at but then made to seem like touching at it was actually stupid and the woman should by all means be in the kitchen. What.

All in all, I think I’m done with Jojo Moyes’ books now. I know a lot of people like them and also these two, but they just don’t work for me. That’s pretty weird because I like romance and chick-lit and heartbreak and healing. Guess you can’t always win.

If you read this far, here’s an interesting thing I learned recently that’s not very related: Did you know that most Kindles use E-Ink technology? Probably. Did you know that that technology has a liquid in the screen and in the liquid a film and in the film microcapsules, in which are positively charged white particles and negatively charged black ones? With a negative field applied, the white particles come to the surface and vice versa. This is how the Kindle can have white without a backlight and with a backlight (usually it’s either or) and also that nice black, also why it flashes when you change pages etc. I just thought this was incredibly interesting!

Anna and the French Kiss - Stephanie Perkins

“Anna, Anna," Josh interrupts. "If I had a euro for every stupid thing I've done, I could buy the Mona Lisa. You'll be fine.”

This is not a book I was supposed to be reading (exams are a real thing, I’ll have you know), but I bought it while down in Edinburgh with my mum last weekend and well, I suppose it says a lot that I could hardly put it down after starting it. Also, please take note; I figured I could stop using dull book cover images pulled from Google for actual books, so have a hipster picture I took in the local Starbucks today instead! If I get accepted to this one thing in January, I'll buy myself an actual camera for my birthday. Things to look forward to...?

Anna and the French Kiss is the story of Anna, who’s a neat freak and a film enthusiast and gets sent to a boarding school in Paris by her father for a year. She doesn’t know the language and has to make new friends, but she also meets the gorgeous, gorgeous American-French boy with a British accent (yes, I know), Étienne St. Clair. Sad thing is that they’re both kind of taken, of course. We wouldn’t have a book if people could just get together as soon as they recognise that the attraction is mutual, right?

I recognise that the book has a lot of issues. I mean, it’s a first world problem book, and that’s something you just have to live with if you’re going to read it. Anna realises that she’s being sent to the Most Amazing City In The World™ (I’ll get back to this later) and a boarding school only open to rich Americans, yet she has the nerve to cry about it. She begs her father to up her weekly allowance because she doesn’t have enough money for proper food, yet she goes to the cinema six times a week. It’s kind of terrible.

She’s also terribly stupid and has that (admittedly stereotypical) ‘American teenager with enough privilege to ignore the rest of the world‘ air about her. I’m still seething that she didn’t know how to write s’il vous plait (instead writing see voo play and having a friend correct it) or even oui (“The only French word I know is oui, which means “yes,” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o- u- i and not w- e- e.”) or that in her 17 years, she hasn’t realised that her family motto, tout pourvoir, is French. (“Argh, I don’t know. I always assumed it was in Latin or some other dead language.”) I mean, could you not have Googled a few basic things before making myself, the reader, think that you’re incredibly stupid? She's everything that's wrong with America, in one person.

Étienne – St. Clair as he’s known most of the book, is nice. He’s passionate about history and awfully kind, good-looking, afraid of heights and being left alone. He might be a bit too perfect, but I’ll let that slide since his description is through the eyes of a girl that loves her. All in all, I liked him. I also liked the rest of the people in their little group of friends – Josh, Rashmi and Mer. They’re all quite likeable and aren’t totally cookie-cutter in their personalities, and they don’t even warm up to Anna the New Girl right away. I don’t have complaints about them. I especially want to mention artsy Josh, who skips classes and draws and is generally super nice. I liked him.

The ‘bad guys’ of the school are very, very stereotypical, however. There’s the popular, pretty girl who hates the main character just because she gets along with the cutest guy in school. There’s the jock who just likes to drink and party and has little to no personality other than to be an asshole. They were just that forgettable, with super generic names like Amanda and… David or something. You know the type, I’m sure.

As for the plot, it’s mostly nice. It flows well and has a good balance of carrot and stick – Anna’s problems and the times things actually work out. The main conflict however is messy and had me skipping lines because I saw where it was going and didn’t really care about the description when it did. There are some bright moments that made me smile but on the other hand there are also very boring ones. For an example, there’s a very generic ‘getting drunk’ scene that could belong to any single movie or book aimed towards teen audiences. Bleh.

The book is set in Paris and I think I have to admit that’s why I picked it up to begin with. I wanted to see if it was Paris with rude people and croissants and a constant hurry and too high a rent or Paris with dreams and croissants and art and all that magic they claim the city has, the American fantasy. Of course, I was disappointed. I kind of wish the book had been set in, say Amsterdam or Vienna (this just because these are my personal favourites, cities I’d love to set a book in because they’re just so curious), or that it was actually set in Paris, fully and truly embracing the beautiful city and not just a dull tourist stereotype.

Anna and the French Kiss is cute YA chick lit, that’s all there is to it. I knew this coming in and I mostly enjoyed the read. I kind of want to give this four out of five, but that would put it on the same line as books like Laughter in the Darkness and Water For Elephants, books I liked more unconditionally than this one. Also, I talked to my friend on Skype and she told me to burn this book, so I can’t really give it more than a three. But if you happen to stand first world problems and want some cute romance set in a fairy tale city… go for it.