Little Black Dress: A Review

Susan McBride - Little Black Dress

When Was It Released? 23rd August
Where Did I Get It From? Stephanie Kim at William Morrow kindly send this to me in exchange for an honest review
Who Published It? William Morrow

As Coco Chanel once famously stated “every girl needs their little black dress." Well Susan McBride’s new novel Little Black Dress follows this premise but takes it one step further. What if that wonderful little black dress didn’t just make you look and feel amazing it did much more? How much more? Well it showed whoever wore the dress what their future holds. Would Coco Chanel still be telling us all we need our little black dresses if they all did this?

Antonia (also known as Toni), is a successful business women with her own thriving business and a relationship that seems to be going well. Life seems to be running along smoothly for Antonia, until her mother, Evie, suffers a stroke, forcing Antonia to return to her home of Blue Hills. Antonia, with the help of her mother’s housekeeper, stumbles across more secrets than she ever dreamed existed in her childhood home. Antonia vows to uncover these secrets and understand her mother’s life, before it is too late, including the story of her aunt Anna who disappeared fifty years ago the night before her wedding. Will Antonia be able to handle the secrets she reveals or are they just better left in the past? Antonia will not only learn about her family, and a little black dress that just may be magical, but she will also learn some home truths about herself too.

I can’t believe that I am admitting to this but I have never read any of Susan McBride’s previous work, although I have heard many great things about The Cougar Club. Well let me tell you that’s about to change, from now on I will be searching out everything written by Susan. After reading Little Black Dress I can’t wait to read more from her. I loved Little Black Dress from the first page to the last, with the concept of fate, the path your life takes and a little magic thrown in, being fresh and new in relation to many topics that chick lit authors tend to focus on. I fell in love with Evie and Toni almost straight away, and as the novel progressed I found myself hoping that Evie would recover in such a way that sometimes I forgot she was she just a character rather than a real person. I wanted to be friends with both of these ladies, even though they were both older than I am, I felt that I could relate to them in many ways. I particularly liked the way in which both the present and past stories are told in relation to each other, switching from one chapter being in the past to the next being in the present. The story flowed easily without losing track of what was going on with each character at any one time.

I am a firm realist and don’t tend to enjoy novels or movies with magical elements in them as I do not find them realistic to life. Some people enjoy novels about magical elements, finding that they transport them off to a different world, however I prefer my novels to have some realism to them. And while Little Black Dress is very relatable in many senses I found that I did not enjoy a large amount of the magical elements in this book. I feel that if more information was given as to where the dress came from before it came to be in the shop I would have enjoyed reading about it more. I would also have liked to have heard more of Anna’s story, where she was while she was gone and what she was thinking and feeling.

Overall I loved this book and would defiantly recommend it, even to those of you who don’t usually like magic mixed in with your chick lit (that would be me before reading the novel). Little Black dress is a sentimental look into family relationships and in particular that special bond between mother and daughter. This novel is filled with hope, magic and love, told with Susan McBride’s sparkling wit. This novel will leave you feeling like a child again, asking yourself the question, does magic truly exist?  

Fly Away Home: A Review

Jennifer Weiner - Fly Away Home

When Was It Released?:July 2010
Where Did I Get It From?: The Library
Who Published It?: Atria Books

Jennifer Weiner creates her magic again, with Fly Away Home, another chick lit novel you just want to dive straight into. Fly Away home is poignant without sending you into a downward spiral of depression and blends Jennifer's wit with her sensitivity to create a timeless novel.

Fly Away home centre's around the story of Sylvie a politician's wife involved in a scandal and her two daughter's; Diana and Lizzie. What's the scandal Sylvie's involved in? Well her husband, Richard,  has been caught by the press having an extramarital affair with a lawyer young enough to be his daughter. Sylvie is devastated, after all she thought that her marriage was pretty perfect. Sylvie had reinvented herself since meeting Richard, in order to be the ideal politician's wife. Her main jobs being that she stays twenty pounds less than she was in her twenties, has a wardrobe full of tailored suits and she tends to her husbands every need. After the shock of the affair will Sylvie stand by her husband or will she choose a different path? After all there are Sylvie's two daughters; Lizzie and Diana, to think about. The scandal has affected both of them in different ways. Lizzie, is a recovering addict trying desperatly to keep her life under control. Will the scandal send her spiralling back down the path to drugs? Diana appears to have everything that Lizzie does'nt. As an ER nurse, with a husband and son (in that order) she seems to have everything she ever wanted. Except her marriage is a loveless one and she's looking for more. Could that more come in the form of an intern doctor? The scandal forces all three women to re-evaluate their lives and discover what they all really want.

Fly Away home is told from the viewpoint of all three women, meaning that we get to really learn about how they are all affected differently. I do not usually enjoy novels where the narration is told from many different viewpoints as this can sometimes become confusing. I thought, however that in Fly Away having the three different narrations was a welcome change and we learnt more about Lizzie, Diana and Sylvie than we would have done otherwise. I also enjoyed the way that Jennifer threw in many enticing and detailed descriptions of food and scenery. I love the way she described meals which instantly made me hungry and want to eat exactly what the characters were. The sense of humour of Selma, Sylvie's mother, was a welcome relief in the otherwise sombre mood of the novel, which I felt was much needed.

I do feel that Jennifer could have expanded on the characters of Sylvie, Diana and Lizzie more, so as to make us really care about them and what happens to them more. The novel also fell a little flat in some parts, redeeming itself towards the end of the novel where all the characters are reunited together. I really did not enjoy the way that Sylvie had not spoken to her husband, Richard, for most of the novel but then at the end suddenly begins talking to him again, and is able to move on. I felt that Sylvie changed her mind too quickly without any real deliberation.

Fly Away Home has an ending which is left pretty open, perhaps leaving options for Jennifer to write a sequel in the future. Even though this is not one of Jennifer's best novels, overall I still enjoyed reading this book. In the time of politicians, sports people and other celebrities wives being thrown into similar situations, this is a very current yet still timeless novel, that women of all ages will enjoy and be able to relate to. With Jennifer Weiner you can't really go wrong, after all she always manges to create chick lit masterpieces and though this novel may not be up to her usual standard its still a book worth reading.

Have you read this novel? Let me know what you thought.







Stay tuned for a review of Jennifer Weiner's most recent novel With You in the very near future.