The Diary of an American Au Pair: A Novel

Sly and funny, I liked the author's bloggy style, and the less is more way she ends each chapter. I know the experience is subjective and not representative of all similar jobs, but her experience in a bossy & cheap woman's Scottish/English household would shatter a lot of people's illusions of working as a foreign au pair. ( )

Just a nice lite read between more intense books. ( )

I hated this book for so many reasons. The biggest reason... SO MANY MISSPELLINGS!!!!!! ( )

(#8 in the 2008 book challenge)

This was quick and mostly fun, a first person novel about being an American nanny for an English family. A good deal of it is indeed that voyeuristic trend of finger-wagging at mothers behaving badly. The aspects I liked the most were the general "fish out of water" parts, I think the author did a great job of describing the experience of being a young person working in a different country -- the times when it's great, the times when it's educational, the times when it's maddening, and the times when it is downright weird. For the life of me, I couldn't muster up any interest in the romance parts of the plot -- they felt very forced to me, like the author couldn't muster up much interest either and then overcompensated by making things a little too wacky on this front.

Grade B
Recommended: To people who have worked abroad, and to Americans who enjoy visiting the UK.