Saturday, September 27, 2014

Pear Shaped...by Stella Newman

What They Say.....Girl meets boy.  Girl loses boy.  Girl loses mind.

Sophie Klein walks into a bar one Friday night and her life changes. She meets James Stephens: charismatic, elusive, and with a hosiery model ex who casts a long, thin shadow over their burgeoning relationship. He’s clever, funny and shares her greatest pleasure in life – to eat and drink slightly too much and then have a little lie down. Sophie’s instinct tells her James is too good to be true – and he is.

An exploration of love, heartbreak, self-image, self-deception and lots of food. Pear Shaped is in turns smart, laugh-out-loud funny and above all, recognizable to women everywhere.

What I Say....Freaking guys.  They can be so stupid.

This started off as a lighthearted little romance, I was happy to see Sophie hitting it off with James and he seemed like he was really going to get it.  And by it, I mean, looks aren't everything.  One weirdness about this book was that Sophie wasn't even fat!!! Ever!!  And then she got too skinny.
But James being a middle aged, financially well-off man, realizes that maybe he could do better than Sophie in the looks department.

So begins the half-in, half-out relationship with a man who doesn't really want her, but doesn't want to not have her either.  Having been through this, and having watched the majority of the women I know go through it too, it's absolutely maddening.

Even watching a fictional character see all the red flags and the signs and still keep going back for more punishment is infuriating.

I won't spoil the ending for anyone, but it was a little more true to life than I would have preferred.  It's always a catch-22, do I want the chick-lit happy ending or what happens to those of us not bound to 352 pages of a life?

Mostly, I prefer a happy ending, I've got enough reality, thankyouverymuch.

I liked the writing, I liked the characters, I liked the story.  I would have preferred just a touch less of the food description - it got too long sometimes. 

All in all, a book worth reading.  Thank you, NetGalley and Bookouture for the Advanced copy.

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