I Heart New York

Lindsey Kelk is apparently being toted around the book industry as ‘the new Sophie Kinsella’. Unfortunately, I cannot whether or not I agree with this statement as I haven’t read any of Kinsella’s novels, but I know that her Shopaholic books are so popular that a movie came out a few years ago based on them, starring Isla Fisher (wife of Sacha Baron Cohen).

I Heart New York is the story of Angela, who has been engaged for around ten years to Mark, whom she discovers in the back of their car with a woman with whom he has been having an affair for quite a while. After embarrassing herself at her best friend’s wedding, Angela flees to New York (as you do) where she checks into the first hotel she finds. She manages to make a best friend over night with unlucky in love concierge Jenny, and then on two of her first outings in town manages to attract an important financial type, Tyler, and the lead singer of one of her favourite bands, Alex.

Now, I do enjoy a good no-brains-required read every once in a while. I like The Devil Wears Prada, still find the YA Georgia Nicholson novels really funny and I also quite like Maeve Binchy. But, this book asked for far to much suspension of disbelief that I was willing to give it.

Angela is apparently transformed by a new haircut and make-up style. The novel seems to hint at the weirdly material idea that if you buy lots of new things and change the way you look, men are bound to love you. Especially rich men. The timing of the novel is also a bit strange. Everything happens very quickly, and hardly any of the characters seem to question this. There is also the fact that Angela writes a blog detailing her love life with both Tyler and Alex, which seems to be more than a little bit borrowed from Sex & The City and the magazine even has the formidable boss figure, a la Miranda from Prada.

Whilst I did like the descriptions of New York, the city at least came alive through the book, I was less enamoured with the novel itself. Kelk has since written I Heart Hollywood and I Heart Paris if you wish to continue reading about Angela, but I think this novel, which I got free with Glamour magazine, was all that I needed.

Holiday Reading

(Stupid bad quality photo)

These are the books I'm taking with me to Spain. 14 days. 6 books. These have all been out for some time, but I'm catching up. and they should be wonderful.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Mexico, 1935. Harrison Shepherd is working in the household of famed muralist Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. Sometimes cook, sometimes secretary, Shepherd is always an observer, recording his experiences in diaries and notebooks. When exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky arrives, Shepherd inadvertently casts in his lot with art and revolution and his aim for an invisible life is thwarted forever.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin yearns to escape her provincial home. She moves to the college town of Troy to start university and takes a job as a part time nanny to a glamorous couple. Tassie is drawn into their life and that of their newly adopted toddler. As the household reveals its complications, Tassie is forced out of her naivety, and the past and future burst forth in dramatic and shocking ways.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
One night in London, Irina McGovern's destiny hinges on a single kiss. Whether she leans into one alluring pair of lips will determine whether she stays with her long-term partner Lawrence or runs off with Ramsey, a hard-living snooker player.
A parallel-universe structure allows us to follow Irina's competing futures with two drastically different men. An intellectual and fellow American, Lawrence is smart and supportive, but rigid and emotionally withdrawn. A British celebrity, Ramsey is passionate and spontaneous, but jealous, undereducated and prone to pick fights. Irina's choice of partner will have ramifications for her relations with friends and family, for her career, and, most importantly, for the texture of her daily life.
If all love is about trade-offs-if every romantic prospect is flawed-how can we ever know which to choose?

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice. Two years later, they meet again-the story starts there...

The Children's Book by AS Byatt
Famous author Olive Wellwood writes a special private book, bound in different colours for each of her children. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world-but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and friends, the son and daughter of curator at the new Victoria & Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets.
They grow up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, but as the sons rebel against their parents and the girls dream of independant futures, they are unaware that in the darkness ahead they will be betrayed unintentionally by the adults who love them.

As you can tell, I don't really do light holiday reading. But this book is the exception. hey it was free:

I Heart New York by Lindsey Kelk
Fleeing her cheating boyfriend and clutching little more than a crumpled bridesmaid dress, a pair of Louboutins and her passport, Angela jumps on a plane-destination NYC.
Holed up in a cute hotel room, Angela gets a New York makeover from her NBF Jenny and a whirlwind tour of the city that never sleeps. Before she knows it, Angela is dating two sexy guys. And, best of all, she gets to write about in her new blog (Carrie Bradshaw eat your heart out). But it's one thing telling readers about you romantic dilemmas, it's another figuring them out for yourself.
Angela has fallen head over heels for the Big Apple, but does she heart New York more than home?