My not so perfect life by Sophie Kinsella
Published: February 7th 2017 by Bantam Press
Genre: Fiction, chick-lit, contemporary, romance
Pages: 438

I have to be honest and say that I never would have picked this one up if it hadn’t been for book club. I read confessions of a shopaholic years ago when it came out, and while I loved those types of books back then, I stopped reading them entirely. The whole chick-lit genre stopped feeding me mentally as I read them and I moved exclusively over to non-fiction. “To learn more” you know?

Anyway, I’m more well rounded in my reading these days and I read just about anything. Which is why I felt it was a great time to join a book club, to get some book views from other angles. And I have to say I’m so happy I did! Not only have I met a whole bunch of amazing people, but I’ve gotten to enjoy books outside what I would chose for myself. Like this one.

This book surprised me in many ways. Since I never would have picked it out myself, but it was a book club choice, I was prejudice to it going in. I was sure it was going to be unsatisfying fluff. But it wasn’t! While yes, it read like a cutesy Reese Witherspoon rom-com, it was actually quite surprising.

The book is about Katie or Cat as she calls herself in London, who is from the countryside and grew up on a farm. While in London, she takes on a persona to fit with her new branding job, and she’s faking a perfect life on Instagram. But as we all know about social media, things are never quite as they appear.

It’s a plot that seems simple enough, but it had way more elements to it than I first thought. Little hints of things I never even saw coming. I was so surprised about half way through that I spend my day off finishing the whole book. I couldn’t put it down! I thought it was so clever the setups that the author had done, that was so unexpected. It really made me look at things from different perspectives, and how what you see isn’t always how it is. (This book has so many levels of that particular element!)

I was pleasantly surprised, and I enjoyed my time with this book. And in the end, I totally hope they’ll make a movie of it. I’d watch that movie in a heartbeat!