[Review] My Not So Perfect Life - Sophie Kinsella: Farm Eggs and Instagram

In MY NOT SO PERFECT LIFE, Katie's super glamorous big city boss goes on a holiday in Katie's hometown after firing her.

What intrigued me: Solely the author. Didn't even read the blurb before I picked this up.

Where's the fun?

I'm starting to think Sophie and I have to part ways. She's been one of my favorite authors for years, but I have now read every single one of her stand-alones and her 5-star quota is... well, not so good. Just like with THE UNDOMESTIC GODDESS, WEDDING NIGHT, and CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?, I just really didn't care for this one. 

MY NOT SO PERFECT LIFE is chronically missing the charme and hilarity that made me fall in love with Kinsella's writing in the first place. It just reads like a weird train-of-thought-esque narrative without an actual plot and Katie, the heroine, just feels like she's a recycled mix of the protagonists of Kinsella's earlier stand-alones. It's also really, really long, 540 pages in my translated version and about 100 pages less in English, without a plot you can imagine how tedious this was to read. Beyond that, the blurb is actually way more interesting than the book, Instagram doesn't really play as much of a role in it, it's more about going back home and life outside of the big city, and ... meh.

Way Too Serious and Angsty

There isn't really anything to talk about because so little happens and I found myself forcing myself to continue instead of actually reading it for fun and breezing through it like I did with my favorites REMEMBER ME? and I'VE GOT YOUR NUMBER. Maybe this is also because I guess this is a different type of book that I'd probably expected to see published under her Madeline Wickham publications. It just feels less fun and happy-go-lucky and more serious and contemplative, which is just not what I want when I'm picking up a Kinsella book. Katie spends a lot of time thirsting after her boss Demeter's life and contemplating the validity of her own experiences and just being sad, and I just couldn't bring myself to care about that. 

Even though all of Kinsella's books have somewhat of a New Adult aspect to them, in terms of angsting about the future, this one dig into it too hard for my taste. I want awkward situations, I want a hilarious heroine, I want a straight-forward plot and an unputdownable read. I didn't get any of that.On top of that, the love interest has the personality of a raw egg. 

Rating:

★☆☆☆☆

 

Overall: Do I Recommend?

I think this might be the one book to make me never want to pick up a Kinsella book again. I found it quite dull and boring and now looking at my Kinsella shelf makes me sad.

Additional Info

Published: May 15th 2017

Pages: 544

Publisher: Goldmann

Genre: Adult / Chick Lit

ISBN: 978-3-442-48550-5

Synopsis:

"Katie Brenner has the perfect life: a flat in London, a glamorous job, and a super-cool Instagram feed.

Ok, so the real truth is that she rents a tiny room with no space for a wardrobe, has a hideous commute to a lowly admin job, and the life she shares on Instagram isn’t really hers.

But one day her dreams are bound to come true, aren’t they?

Until her not-so perfect life comes crashing down when her mega-successful boss Demeter gives her the sack. All Katie’s hopes are shattered. She has to move home to Somerset, where she helps her dad with his new glamping business.

Then Demeter and her family book in for a holiday, and Katie sees her chance. But should she get revenge on the woman who ruined her dreams? Or try to get her job back? Does Demeter – the woman with everything – have such an idyllic life herself? Maybe they have more in common than it seems.

And what’s wrong with not-so-perfect, anyway?"
(Source: Goodreads)

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[Review] Across the Universe (#1) - Beth Revis: Spaceships and Cryogenic Freezing

In ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, Amy was cryogenically frozen and supposed to live on a new planet three hundred years from now, but got woken up early.

What intrigued me: I love space books, shower me in space books!

Errors and Sex-Obsessed Incestuous People

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE is probably the most frustrating book I've read this year. There are so many errors within the first 20 pages alone (15ish!), grammar issues, misplaced commas, wrong tenses etc, that it honestly gave me an eye twitch for the entire book. Just everything about the execution of this potentially interesting story misses the mark for me. 

I hated the dual POV, especially love interest Elder, mainly because the voices of both protagonists sound the exact same, which made me super uncomfortable with the romance. It's like you're reading about siblings *shudder*. The whole concept heavily relies on masterful storytelling because the setting is so repetitive and feels almost like a chamber play. Revis just doesn't deliver, it's not helping that the world building is super confusing and makes no sense. I struggled paying attention, I struggled caring for anything that's happening, I struggled finding the actual plot in there - the whole book is basically summed up by saying this lady woke up early and meanwhile the inhabitants of the ship developed a taste for incest. This also features a super unnecessary scene in which protagonist Amy gets saved from being raped. You'll find that a huge chunk of this book deals with sex and people not being able to control their desires and pumping themselves with hormones to increase their sexual desires, so yeah, that's something I wish I had known before picking this up. I was looking for a action-filled, fast-paced spaceship book, not this.

Science? What Science?

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE taught me that I love space books, but I hate spaceship books. The setting is the thing I disliked the most about this, if you're like me super into discovering new worlds and alien planets, this isn't the right pick at all. 

And if you're expecting accurate science or even just science fiction, look somewhere else. The sciencey parts are so ridiculously off that it honestly made me angry. The simplest scientific processes, even just common sense issues, really, are misconstrued in order to fill up the pages or to make a super dramatic shocking reveal. People being away while they're frozen, clones not realizing that they look like somebody else, a ridiculous shift in social behavior structures that could've never happened to human society in the 250-odd years that Amy has spent frozen - it all made me want to tear my hair out. 

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE really reads like a very awkward attempt to make a commentary on society and carnal desires in the least elegant way possible, and I couldn't help but feel tricked into reading this, because this is just not what I signed up for. What did I just read?

highlight text for SPOILER


This is literally the movie Passenger. This ends in love interest Elder admitting he unplugged Amy's cryogenic chamber, thus, forcing her to live out her life on the spaceship and she forgives him, because he's nice to her. I'm going to throw something. That only made me even angrier about this book. How am I supposed to not hate this guy with the fury of a thousand burning suns?! Feminism, who?


/SPOILER

Rating:

★☆☆☆☆

 

Overall: Do I Recommend?

I genuinely disliked this, beyond the super subjective points, the craft aspects are less than ideal - so many typos, so many unncessary scenes, so much rambling - I wish somebody else would rewrite this. This is basically the movie Passenger, in an AU where everyone is incestuous and sex-obsessed. I don't even know

Trigger warning: rape, incest, suicide

Additional Info

Published: November 29th 2011

Pages: 416

Publisher: Razorbill

Genre: YA / Sci-Fi 

Synopsis:

"A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.... 

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, 300 years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end 50 years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules. 

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone - one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship - tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next. 

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming."
(Source: Goodreads)

What's your favorite book set in space?

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