Trashionista Review
August 17, 2007
Being an author is surreal, especially when, like me, you haven’t had much time to get used to it. Everything is new: and yesterday brought my first ‘big’ review for Wish You Were Here on the uber-cool Trashionista site which is devoted to women’s fiction. They gave the book three stars and liked a lot of it (but not everything) and loved the characters. I’m thrilled to be reviewed on Trashionista and I hope you’ll make your own minds up about the book’s ending.
As Meatloaf almost said, three out of five ain’t bad, and guess who else got 3 stars – Marian Keyes, Sophie Kinsella and um… Jane Austen for Persuasion (sorry Trashionista but I’d have given JA 50 out of 5!)
So, on balance, a small hurrah! I now feel I’ve really arrived…
You can read the whole review here.
PS I forgot to say my agent told me the hard cover of Wish You Were Here has been selling incredibly well. Readers clearly do still love hardbacks and to be honest, all the hardback LBDs are utterly gorgeous and totally covetable. Double hurrah!
Posted by Phillipa @ 4:29 am | Leave a Comment
Laura Vivanco Says:
The reviewer says “I’m annoyed at another misleading blurb”, but clearly the fact that it’s “another” misleading blurb means that she knows that blurbs are often misleading, and that it isn’t the author’s fault. Still, if it had a negative impact on her experience of reading it, then I suppose she’s right to mention it in the review, but it’s not something you could have changed.
The one question the review raised for me was about the finances. Would the father not have got sick pay (if the accident caused a short or medium term absence from work), or incapacity benefit if he’d never be able to work again? And couldn’t the sister have got a student loan?
Phillipa Says:
Laura: thanks for your comment. I did think about these points carefully and I could answer them here in some detail, but I think to do so would be a distraction from the love story for people who are going to read the book.
Laura Vivanco Says:
Oh, of course, I don’t want you to have to respond by bringing out spoilers or anything that might spoil other people’s enjoyment.
I just brought it up because I personally tend to get distracted by thoughts about the heroine’s finances when they’re brought up in a novel and not fully explained (and this isn’t limited to novels – I wonder why Cinderella was doing the job she was without her father intervening, and I wonder if she had a dowry set aside for her etc), but I wouldn’t expect them to be explained in a review, or here either.
Phillipa Says:
That’s OK Laura. Author blogs are pecuilar forums, in some ways as there’s always a tension between the need to answer perfectly legitinate questions and going into details about the book that might spoil the reader’s enjoyment. All I’ll say is, in Beth’s view, her family wouldn’t have had the cash. If you read the book you’ll see that an important aspect of Beth’s character is what she *thinks* she ought to be doing for her family. What she thinks she should take on. Both Jack and Beth delude themselves about what they think is right and if I go any further there will be spoilers.
But this romantic *fiction* at heart – dare I say romantic fantasy? It’s about Jack and Beth and their love story.
Laura Vivanco Says:
Of course the love story is central, but people still tend to want to read about love stories between characters whom they find attractive/sympathetic/interesting.
I think there’s a big difference between characters whom the author thinks “delude themselves” (and for whom learning not to delude themselves might be part of the character arc) and stories about characters who just do silly or illogical things when there’s no good reason given for their actions, they don’t learn from their mistakes, and one even gets the impression that the author thinks that the silly behaviour is admirable. I’m thinking, for example, of the commonly designated “TSTL heroine” who rushes into danger because this is a way to characterise her as being “feisty”, or perhaps because without her doing these things there would be no plot.
Anyway, I’m looking forwards to reading about Beth and Jack.