First of all, I have to apologise if any formatting issues occur with the publication of this blog post. My laptop kicked the bucket and so I’m using a very old, very glitchy, laptop that has many quirks; including, it appears, a very outdated version of windows live writer.
This week I read The Overnight Socialite by Bridie Clark.
The Blurb on The Back:
In this beguiling retelling of the classic Pygmalion, we meet Lucy Ellis, a Manhattan transplant who dreams of making it as a fashion designer but instead toils away on a Garment District assembly line. Poor Lucy is starting to think the unthinkable: maybe it’s time to pack it in and move home to Minnesota. Then, during a torrential downpour, at her most bedraggled and disheartened, Lucy meets Wyatt Hayes IV, man-about-town and bored Ph.D. anthropologist.
Wyatt has just been publicly dissed by New York’s reigning socialite, and boasts to his best friend that he can transform any woman – even a trailer-born nobody like Lucy – into this year’s “It” girl. Set against the gold-plated world of Manhattan’s social elite. The Overnight Socialite, a media sensation in its own right, puts a witty twenty-first century spin on a timeless story of transformation and unlikely love.
My Thoughts:
I really should read, and pay attention, to the blurb on the back. It wasn’t until I typed the blurb on the back that it all really sunk in what I had just read. Here’s the thing, I’ve never read Pygmalion but I generally know of the story and apparently I really should read it, (go figure) and so didn’t know at the time of reading The Overnight Socialite that this book is a modern day retelling. Essentially, I read the entire book thinking I was reading a scrip to a really bad sequel of She’s All That and basically imagining Rachel Lee Cook and Freddie Prinze Jnr in the lead roles of the book. This book, to me, at the time of reading, was She’s All That meets Gossip Girl (I never watch the latter but I’m very familiar with She’s All That and I confess that I did land up watching that movie upon completion of The Overnight Socialite).
There were some things that I liked about the book. I liked that it hooked me and I couldn’t put it down, even though I felt so negatively about it (remember, “I thought it was a really bad sequel”) but I generally liked the characters and was hooked into their personalities. I don’t know if it’s just me but I was really shipping two of the characters together (I won’t write any spoilers) but they didn’t land up together I wasn’t too impressed.
I, surprisingly, didn’t love the ending either. I mean it was good, it was all tied up nice and neatly but it just felt too neat, too abrupt and just too….clean. I was just expecting more of the ending, more action, more heartache,just MORE.
Is it a good read? Yes. Is it an easy read? Yes. Did I love it? Not as much as I would have liked. I liked the writing style of Clark, I just wanted more; I think I might try and read some of her other work and see just how creative she can be.
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