Chick lit with a twist!
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Jane Wenham-Jones, for those of you that haven't heard of her before, is the 'agony aunt' for Writing Magazine. Her style of writing often carries a subtle hint of humour, and as I read her articles I thought perhaps I should try her novels, where she's welcome to express herself how she pleases, and use that humour to its full extent.
In Perfect Alibis she certainly does that. The main character Stephanie is a little cheesed-off with life; her kids drive her crazy, and she's fed up with her husband and his bedroom antics. What she would really like (besides George to leave her alone!) is a job, a little independence, and to feel valued. So she gets a job with the wife of George's friend Ken, at her recruitment business.
However, PA's is not what Stephanie expected. PA doesn't actually stand for Personal Assistant at all, but Perfect Alibis. The place Madeleine runs is an agency which offers women alibis for when they are having extra-marital affairs! Stephanie is scandalised, particularly when she sees some of the clients that come in and out of the place. Some of the women appear to be happily married but have a 'bit on the side' and Madeleine and her girls set it up so they have iron-clad alibis should things go wrong.
This book is hilarious. It portrays Stephanie to be a woman who has some self-esteem issues, and who is longing for the past. This is not helped when she sees in the local newspaper that the mother of her first love, Troy, passed away. She visits Troy and offers her condolences - but condolence is far from Troy's mind. When he sees Stephanie again, he does his best to persuade her that they should be together, and they both leave their respective spouses. Stephanie is horrified, but still tempted. Seeing Troy again has stirred up all those old feelings she thought she'd buried forever. He makes her feel wanted and sexy again, and more importantly, she wants him back.
What with working for a firm who encourages extra-marital sex, having a family that barely seem to notice whether she's there or not, and her ex-boyfriend bombarding her with messages of undying love, Stephanie has no idea what to do! Things get more and more complicated and Stephanie finds it difficult to cope.
As Stephanie's relationship with Troy grows, you can really feel her inner struggle with morality and sexuality. Wenham-Jones has a way with words and you really get to know the characters in the book, some of them you'll want to kill, some of them, hug. A truly hilarious read that will have you hooked from start to finish.
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Fun and A guide to infidelity! What more can you need?
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I bought this book because I was quite intreagued to see how one can get away with infidelity. If there was an agency like P.A. anywhere I am sure it would be packed every day. This story, even if it is a product of imagination and creativity on behalf of the author, has been approached so well and with a lovely storyline that I could not put it down. I was anxious to see what would happen with the heroin, Stephanie and was pleasantly surprised to see that even though infidelity was the main aspect of this book it does not praise it in any way. Very well written and the author's humour and talent are clearly her best asset.
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weak and unsatisfying plot
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As a local resident in Kent and buying the book at the authors signing, I was looking forward to it.
I hate to say it was very dissapointing, with a weak shallow and unbelievable plot and characters that you couldn't feel any empathy with.
The idea of perfect alibis is very clever, I don't think it was carried off very well and having "orgasms" mentioned every couple of pages doesn't make me laugh or make it very sensual either!
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A tale of the unexpected
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Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Raising The Roof, I approached this new novel with not a little trepidation. With its subtitle of "How to have an affair and get way with it..." alarm bells rang, accompanying images of lovetorn couples and marriages sinking into oblivion. But despite the first impression of rich bitches throwing their money around like there's no tomorrow, there really are characters in this book that the contemporary reader can sympathise with: whether it be the pre-teen from hell, the computer-game geek or the taken-for-granted Mum. And everybody must have known a Troy at some point in life: devastatingly attractive, yet unreliable. Whilst I didn't always follow the various scenarios in the text-driven parts of the plot, this was more than compensated by the laugh-out-loud moments, and thus earned five stars.
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Moving and funny
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This is a lovely book. I was looking forward to Jane Wenham-Jones' second novel and I'm not disappointed. It's moving and funny and beautifully written. This author's gift is to write character and emotion then expertly fuse the two together with laughs. I believe she has a great future. Looking forward to number three.
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