I went to bed with a bad headache last night. After taking some medicine, I thought I would lay down with a book until the pain subsided, and then I’d be able to go to sleep. I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. – there was no way to put the book down until it was finished.
In this nationally published chick lit book, Rebecca Bloomwood is a financial journalist for the magazine “Successful Saving.” There’s just one problem with that – she’s also a compulsive shopper, and is in debt up to her eyebrows. She regularly gets letters from her bank and from her VISA card, both of which she ignores, throws away, or tries to make excuses, some of which include the (fictional) death of her dog, illness, broken bones, and, to try to engender trust, her equally fictional recent conversion to Christianity. None of these pleas seem to lower her payments, however.
Luke Brandon, gorgeous, smart, and savvy PR representative of the financial world, seems to see right through her, and she hates that. She’s managed to pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes – they all think she’s some sort of financial expert and come to her for advice. She knows just enough about money to pull off the charade, but cringes to think what would happen if the truth were to come out – she’s absolutely out of control with her spending.
This book is written first person, so we get lots of insight into her personal thoughts and rationalizations, all of which are hysterical. At first, she comes across as completely self-centered, but by the end of the book, we have a sense that she has learned a lot and we are cheering her on.
Some of my favorite passages in the book revolve around her attempts to save money (by buying a whole kitchen’s worth of cookery so she can make her own take-out) and to make more money (by taking a weekend job at a clothing store, where she proceeds to hide the clothes she wants from the customers.) She really does try, but a sale makes her heart beat faster, and getting something free when you buy something else – why, that’s a savings right there!
This book is definitely going down on my list of favorite reads for the year. However, now I feel somewhat hypocritical. I don’t like language in the books I read, and yet I was so sucked in to the story, I found myself not noticing the language that is actually fairly rampant in this book. If language disturbs you, you’ll want to pass this one by. You’ll also want to skip over pages 32-34, and pages 305-306. What I intend to do is buy my own copy (the one I read was from the library) and employ the use of a black marker. That way, I can enjoy the story again without worrying about one of my children picking it up and seeing something they shouldn’t.
It’s a judgment call you’ll want to make for yourself, certainly.
(This book was published by Dell Publishing in 2001.)
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