The protagonist is Abigail, a woman who's fun, sociable, hardworking and committed to being a good friend and daughter. She holds down an adult job, maintains an adult relationship (albeit a dull, blindly unhappy relationship, which I sincerely believe is very adult) for four years, and in among all the spelling errors, Abi breaks up with the boyfriend and reflects on the former relationship throughout the first third of the book, but in a way that is both relatable and helpful in following her journey. You get to see a woman realizing how boring things had become with the ex. She becomes more confident and meets a lot of new people through a game of casual dating that is guided by her over-commitment to the advice of her roommate-turned-close friend Robert. You get to enjoy her growth as a woman in her late twenties, being well past college but not yet a grown-up. The novel is an adventure in the sense that you've learned some of the things she has in your own life and you're quietly rooting for her as a friend would, unable to do anything but watch, word by word, as she makes her own decisions and learns from them, which, of course, is rather like real friendship. Speaking of which, Abi helps a coworker once she has a big break-up, and it's cool watching the empowerment and encouragement. Their interactions make for another good relationship.
When she's out with her well-dressed friend Plum, who is quick to remind others of her perceived bad luck with men, the following paragraph happens:
Yes! I want to punch the air. I am the singledom coach. I am the love sage! Move over Robert!
and I'd very much like to get into the "Move over Robert!" sentence and correct it, adding a necessary comma after 'over'.
While the wedding party is in France, they go to a Beziers boules tournament, and I come across a section I don't understand. A sentence ends abruptly on one page in one particular way, and another sentence begins on the next page in another particular way. Confusingly.
From page to page, this happens:
'Right. Bella, Bella. Beautiful girl, ugly
followed immediately by
underhand bowl. It lands next to Robert's last throw.
I double and triple-checked, flicking back and forth on my e-reader to be sure that this silly thing Again, the spelling errors. Where was the editor in all this? I really like and root for Abigail, Robert ,and Abi's sister Sophie. Why give me all this and refuse to have more consistency and Spell Check? When I'm not banging the heel of my hand against my skull, I can enjoy the witty banter and relate to some of the thoughts Abigail has. A moment I really enjoy is attacked by poor proofreading choices in the following way: When having a drink with Robert, Abigail thinks of the fact that he is the one man she can truly be herself with, and included in that lovely, significant moment in their friendship is her use of the word
pre-rehassed
which bothers me, as you could guess, because there's no need to make up a word for what you mean to say when the English language is in possession of the exact words for such a thing, like "pre-rehearsed" or "rehearsed" or "well-practiced" or something like that. I'm so disappointed.
A positive I've mentioned is the fact that Robert has been instrumental in the improvement of her confidence, helping her realize that certain things are not a big deal, but are simply differences between people, that dating can be fun and relatively easy. Clearly, the friendship between them won't stay exactly the same over time, which is intriguing because of their chemistry, and he's given her so much that soon (as is the way with a romance story)
+ that he's going to be hurt. Being a grown, fictional man, he'll get over it sometime, but as a reader, I have to wonder how much Abi will hurt him, and how much it'll change things between them.
With 2% of the e-book left, I come across a page with the line,
JimmyJames and Vix are flirting noisily other across the table...
which does not make enough sense. 'Flirting noisily other'? Hmmm. I'm really enjoying this story, but moments like this one have me screeching to a halt. I'm really bothered by the dozens of mistakes; they're unnecessary and bothersome and take away from the writer's credibility. I want to cheer on author Emma Burgess and be truly sucked into her work, riding along until it spits me out, but all of the missing words, including the countless, mind-blowing
","
won't let me do that enough. The "," moments are easily avoidable and send an amateurish message, because the use of those quotations, containing only a comma, is never explained, and I so wish it had been. We're never told that the "," is a stylistic choice meant to say something about Abigail's thought process. The book doesn't have heavily stylized language and/or punctuation like Richard Price's Lush Life. This isn't Emily Dickinson with her dashes.
I am at a very appropriate place in my life for reading this novel. I can relate to some of the things Abi and her pals experience/mull over/gripe about, but I also get to feel proud of some of their achievements because I recently went through them myself, and I like this connection I formed with fictional people, feeling like a peer, rooting for some of them, rolling my eyes at others.
A positive I've mentioned is the fact that Robert has been instrumental in the improvement of her confidence, helping her realize that certain things are not a big deal, but are simply differences between people, that dating can be fun and relatively easy. Clearly, the friendship between them won't stay exactly the same over time, which is intriguing because of their chemistry, and he's given her so much that soon (as is the way with a romance story)
+ that he's going to be hurt. Being a grown, fictional man, he'll get over it sometime, but as a reader, I have to wonder how much Abi will hurt him, and how much it'll change things between them.
With 2% of the e-book left, I come across a page with the line,
JimmyJames and Vix are flirting noisily other across the table...
which does not make enough sense. 'Flirting noisily other'? Hmmm. I'm really enjoying this story, but moments like this one have me screeching to a halt. I'm really bothered by the dozens of mistakes; they're unnecessary and bothersome and take away from the writer's credibility. I want to cheer on author Emma Burgess and be truly sucked into her work, riding along until it spits me out, but all of the missing words, including the countless, mind-blowing
","
won't let me do that enough. The "," moments are easily avoidable and send an amateurish message, because the use of those quotations, containing only a comma, is never explained, and I so wish it had been. We're never told that the "," is a stylistic choice meant to say something about Abigail's thought process. The book doesn't have heavily stylized language and/or punctuation like Richard Price's Lush Life. This isn't Emily Dickinson with her dashes.
I am at a very appropriate place in my life for reading this novel. I can relate to some of the things Abi and her pals experience/mull over/gripe about, but I also get to feel proud of some of their achievements because I recently went through them myself, and I like this connection I formed with fictional people, feeling like a peer, rooting for some of them, rolling my eyes at others.
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