Blurb: Tess Brookes has always been a Girl with a Plan. But when the Plan goes belly up, she’s forced to reconsider. After accidently answering her flatmate Vanessa’s phone, she decides that since being Tess isn’t going so well, she might try being Vanessa. With nothing left to lose, she accepts Vanessa’s photography assignment to Hawaii – she used to be an amateur snapper, how hard can it be? Right? But Tess is soon in big trouble. And the gorgeous journalist on the shoot with her, who is making it very clear he’d like to get into her pants, is an egotistical monster. Far from home and in someone else’s shoes, Tess must decide whether to fight on through, or ‘fess up and run …
I first picked up this book for the two things I’m always looking for in a chick lit: 1) A light read that’s easy to get lost into, and 2) how relatable the protagonist seems to me. Post-reading About A Girl, I can testify that I’ve found a new friend on print.
Meet Tess Brookes, otherwise known as a deeply troubled control freak. The 25-year-old spends too much time trying to get ahead in her career, and she’s been suffocating for the past decade secretly loving her best friend. At the turn of events, she loses all control, faces an existential crisis, and has no choice but to avail herself to the myriad of possibilities life offers beyond her fishbowl world, which later led her to a self-discovery journey, specifically by stealing someone else’s identity (the last thing someone like her would do) and fly off to Hawaii (away from her tiny apartment in London). Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
I know the plot sounds formulaic, and yes, there are already plenty of other midlife-crisis-driven chick lits out there since Bridget Jones, but admit it: It’s why you buy the novel in the first place. You want a familiar adventure that takes you to places with the comfort of knowing everything will be alright in the end, just like in life. No matter how deep a sh*t you’re in, you can be reminded that we are all in the same boat out of a well-written book.
Now let’s get on with the review.
This is the first book I’ve read of the popular author of the ‘I Heart’ series and beauty blogger Lindsey Kelk, so I’ve got next to nothing to compare this book with in terms of its plot, characters, storytelling and other writing technicalities. But Kelk definitely has a way with words; I’ve got a massive list of highlighted phrases I love in this book, such as her vivid description of a “bright, Pepto-Bismol pink”, some funny choices of swear words like “F*** a duck, he was so handsome,” and a fresh simile she employed to exemplify a goofy dance: “… [it was] very Tom Cruise on the Oprah sofa”.
I especially love how straightforward her tone is and how natural her humor comes off. Kelk’s also maintained a good pace throughout the book and really made Tess a voice that speaks like a best friend to the reader. It didn’t take long before I was hooked, as I felt an affinity with her character and her struggles.
It was all well and good if you were one of those girls who slinks around starkers after sexytimes, but I wasn’t really a naked person. I was very much an ‘always sleep in a nightie in case the house burns down’ person.
It was clever for Kelk to throw in plenty of ‘you’s in the narrative to achieve this effect, whether it was a conscious decision or not. For example, Tess describing a rich and famous male celebrity in the book: “… he was clearly not a man who usually had his photo taken by a girl whose most recently photography experiment ran to Facebooking her dinner every night for a week and downloading apps that showed you what you‘d look like if you were morbidly obese.” The ‘you’s in most every clause, saturated by Kelk’s smart interjections of pop culture references, have clearly won my heart over, and together they’ve successfully made Tess so easy to empathize with.
I also didn’t see the twist at Chapter 20 coming, even though most readers have said it’s not that all surprising. I mean, for me, if you’re already losing yourself into the character you can relate with so much, it’s difficult to take a step back and look at the grand scheme of things. This may be a spoiler-free review, but the only thing I’d say I’ve learned out of this twist is this: Every character, no matter how minor they seem, still plays a role to support the protagonist’s advancements in the story. Trying thinking about the friends and acquaintances in your life who’s exerted differing levels of influence on life decisions.
Aside from Tess, the leading characters in the book are pretty 3-dimensional. Paige is easily the Serena van der Woodsen in your life, Charlie is the guy who doesn’t know what he wants, and Nick is the guy who needs you in his life in order to love again (don’t we all love feeling wanted and needed?). My only complaint is Amy and her lack of depth. It was blatant that her sole existence was for Tess to be able to cope with her secret love for Charlie in the last 10 years, which plays a big role in the plot, as well as for Tess to put up with the immense life pressures in her family. Our heroine is someone who places higher importance on people and things other than herself, so Amy’s unstable lifestyle was easily necessitated by Tess’s workaholic nature. Other than that, and this is just personal, I imagine the upcoming sequel can do just fine without Amy (yes I’m mean that way), unless Tess and Paige is about to get into some crazy b*tch fight.
It sucks right now that I still have to wait until July 17 to get my hands on What A Girl Wants. More than the romance she’s about to embark upon at the end of About A Girl, I’m more interested about how Tess would eventually resolve the rough patch with her family. It’s probably going to be tough for her overbearing mother to learn that the new Tess is less than the perfect girl she used to throw her implicit demands at, and I can’t wait to see if Tess is going to retreat from her newfound courage or to stand up even taller for who she really is.
Love, Stace
