Giovanna Fletcher
Author of Eve of Man
Series
Works by Giovanna Fletcher
Untitled (Eve of Man, #3) 4 copies
Associated Works
Morrer Duas Vezes; Billy e Eu; Em Terra Alheia; E Todas as Fases da Lua (2019) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1985-01-29
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- UK
Members
Reviews
2024 Advent, Day 17: This is a book that is listed as a romance but I think it's more about grief and rebuilding yourself after loss. I know many people don't consider breakups (as this narrative opens with) as a loss as such, but I have often thought of them that way-- not as the death of a person but the death of a potential self, a future which will no longer exist. I think maybe thinking of things in these terms allows us the grace to be there for ourselves and grants the space for show more mourning. This book is about a woman whose partner of 10 years tells her over dinner that he never sees himself marrying her despite having talked about it for years and consistently indicating to her/ their friends/ their family that this was a path they were on together. This is the story of a woman who dedicated a decade of herself to the promise of a future that will never come to fruition.
May I just say, the absolute audacity of this man for wasting everyone's time. I am so glad that this story did not then become about a quest for a new one.
That is not to say the narrative is groundbreaking-- I have in fact seen it many times before. But, in a sea of romance books and movies about being healed from a bad relationship by replacing the partner with a shiny new one, I love that this, at its heart, us about falling in love with yourself. 3 stars....Maybe 4 show less
May I just say, the absolute audacity of this man for wasting everyone's time. I am so glad that this story did not then become about a quest for a new one.
That is not to say the narrative is groundbreaking-- I have in fact seen it many times before. But, in a sea of romance books and movies about being healed from a bad relationship by replacing the partner with a shiny new one, I love that this, at its heart, us about falling in love with yourself. 3 stars....Maybe 4 show less
The premise of this book is great: the last woman on Earth being held by an evil corporation trying to profit off her fertility. Sadly, the authors convey prejudices that are intolerable.
1.) Fat shaming/body prejudice: There are two male characters Hartman and Chubs who are mocked for being fat. Even more ridiculously, Eve, the last young woman on Earth, could have been shown as the epitome of female beauty no matter what her body looked like (just like every woman is! Our natural bodies are show more beautiful exactly as they are!!). But no. On the day Eve is to meet her first Potential mate, she eats only a breakfast of fruit, not a substantial breakfast because we wouldn't want a "bloated tummy" distracting her suitor. Also, in preparation for meeting her suitor, she wears makeup to "accentuate her finer features and diminish her flaws." Seriously!?! Is this the message we're trying to send to young men and women? Even worse, as she puts on her dress, the belt of her dress is fastened "making her waist look tiny." WTF! It's 2019. Why are we promoting a tiny waist as attractive? I feel badly for the author that she is still trapped under these beauty myths, but please stop perpetuating them.
2.) Racism: **Spoiler alert** Diego, Potential suitor #2, is from Peru and is described as "short" with "skin dark and rough...and beady eyes." This character goes on to try and kill our main character. I find it disgusting in a book that is overwhelmingly white that one of the few people of color is described in such a way and then revealed to be a murderer.
3.) Woman as natural mother: this book comes across as hugely pro-life (calling embryos souls). Also, the authors make scientific intervention in pregnancy seem monstrous, which is hurtful and insensitive to couples who depend on scientific intervention in order to be parents. Lastly, the author talks about women who are unable to conceive as "failures" "with flaws" which is ridiculous. Not every woman wants to give birth and not every woman is capable of giving birth; those scenarios do NOT make them failures in any way.
There are several more problems with this book, but I'm heart sick at even having to write this. I would obviously NOT recommend this book to anyone. show less
1.) Fat shaming/body prejudice: There are two male characters Hartman and Chubs who are mocked for being fat. Even more ridiculously, Eve, the last young woman on Earth, could have been shown as the epitome of female beauty no matter what her body looked like (just like every woman is! Our natural bodies are show more beautiful exactly as they are!!). But no. On the day Eve is to meet her first Potential mate, she eats only a breakfast of fruit, not a substantial breakfast because we wouldn't want a "bloated tummy" distracting her suitor. Also, in preparation for meeting her suitor, she wears makeup to "accentuate her finer features and diminish her flaws." Seriously!?! Is this the message we're trying to send to young men and women? Even worse, as she puts on her dress, the belt of her dress is fastened "making her waist look tiny." WTF! It's 2019. Why are we promoting a tiny waist as attractive? I feel badly for the author that she is still trapped under these beauty myths, but please stop perpetuating them.
2.) Racism: **Spoiler alert** Diego, Potential suitor #2, is from Peru and is described as "short" with "skin dark and rough...and beady eyes." This character goes on to try and kill our main character. I find it disgusting in a book that is overwhelmingly white that one of the few people of color is described in such a way and then revealed to be a murderer.
3.) Woman as natural mother: this book comes across as hugely pro-life (calling embryos souls). Also, the authors make scientific intervention in pregnancy seem monstrous, which is hurtful and insensitive to couples who depend on scientific intervention in order to be parents. Lastly, the author talks about women who are unable to conceive as "failures" "with flaws" which is ridiculous. Not every woman wants to give birth and not every woman is capable of giving birth; those scenarios do NOT make them failures in any way.
There are several more problems with this book, but I'm heart sick at even having to write this. I would obviously NOT recommend this book to anyone. show less
Have you ever wanted to be famous? Or maybe you'd just like to be in the orbit of someone famous. It looks like a glamorous life with all those perks and parties and people wanting to be you, doesn't it? But there is a price to celebrity and it's not an easy price to pay, especially for someone not used to the spotlight, the manipulation, the egos, and the all-consuming drive for publicity and career advancement. How can you possibly build a normal, healthy relationship in the midst of all show more of this? In Giovanna Fletcher's sweetly romantic novel, Billy and Me, she examines just this very situation.
Sophie May lives in the small Kent village of Rosefont Hill and works at the local tea shop. Having lost her dad at eleven, her entire world changed and she became withdrawn, quiet, and reserved. She's been content to stay at home with her mum and work at Tea-on-the-Hill with the gossipy but lovable Molly, a sort of second mother and best friend to her. This settled, quiet life suits her and has allowed her to come out of her shell a little bit. When Rosefont Hill is chosen as the location for a new film of Pride and Prejudice, Sophie meets Billy Buskin, the teen heartthrob who has been cast as Mr. Darcy. She doesn't know who he is to start and he is charmed by her very normal outlook on life. She steps out of her comfort zone and the two of them fall into a relationship quite quickly. But dating Billy brings with it a life she's never expected, with people taking pictures of her and digging into the past she's buried so deeply.
Billy is a sweet, warm, and caring boyfriend although he has lapses where he forgets just how his industry and the piranhas surrounding it come across to outsiders. He is blind to the slights Sophie faces and never considers if she'd want a life beyond just as Billy Buskin's girlfriend. As his star continues to rise, Sophie sublimates herself to him and his career, growing steadily more miserable. Their relationship was a whirlwind affair with Billy sweeping Sophie off her feet and away from her comfortable life in Kent but neither of them gave enough thought to the long term implications of their very different worlds. And those implications grow from bumps in the relationship to mountains they might not be able to climb.
This is a simple and charming bit of chick lit with the added bonus of a thorough insider's view of life in the film industry and the pressures that fame and the public eye place on relationships. Told in the first person by Sophie, the reader is privy to her feelings of exclusion and growing realization that she's shelved her dream of one day buying Molly out of her tea shop in order to be the accommodating girlfriend of a star. Billy does come across as oblivious to Sophie's need for a quiet life once he's tucked her into his busy existence but Sophie's sensitivity to things that are just a part and parcel of his job can be a tad over the top. Many of the descriptions were very much like a screenplay directing actors what to do and how to look so less necessary here in the written medium of a novel than in something designed to be translated to screen. In terms of one of the climactic moment of the novel, well Sophie's big secret, the one she didn't want anyone to know, wasn't really surprising or even of a magnitude to create such shame so many years on. But these are little hiccups in a generally pleasing novel that lovers of chick lit will find to be a quick and delightful read about being true to yourself and being open to love and the hard work of caring deeply for another person. show less
Sophie May lives in the small Kent village of Rosefont Hill and works at the local tea shop. Having lost her dad at eleven, her entire world changed and she became withdrawn, quiet, and reserved. She's been content to stay at home with her mum and work at Tea-on-the-Hill with the gossipy but lovable Molly, a sort of second mother and best friend to her. This settled, quiet life suits her and has allowed her to come out of her shell a little bit. When Rosefont Hill is chosen as the location for a new film of Pride and Prejudice, Sophie meets Billy Buskin, the teen heartthrob who has been cast as Mr. Darcy. She doesn't know who he is to start and he is charmed by her very normal outlook on life. She steps out of her comfort zone and the two of them fall into a relationship quite quickly. But dating Billy brings with it a life she's never expected, with people taking pictures of her and digging into the past she's buried so deeply.
Billy is a sweet, warm, and caring boyfriend although he has lapses where he forgets just how his industry and the piranhas surrounding it come across to outsiders. He is blind to the slights Sophie faces and never considers if she'd want a life beyond just as Billy Buskin's girlfriend. As his star continues to rise, Sophie sublimates herself to him and his career, growing steadily more miserable. Their relationship was a whirlwind affair with Billy sweeping Sophie off her feet and away from her comfortable life in Kent but neither of them gave enough thought to the long term implications of their very different worlds. And those implications grow from bumps in the relationship to mountains they might not be able to climb.
This is a simple and charming bit of chick lit with the added bonus of a thorough insider's view of life in the film industry and the pressures that fame and the public eye place on relationships. Told in the first person by Sophie, the reader is privy to her feelings of exclusion and growing realization that she's shelved her dream of one day buying Molly out of her tea shop in order to be the accommodating girlfriend of a star. Billy does come across as oblivious to Sophie's need for a quiet life once he's tucked her into his busy existence but Sophie's sensitivity to things that are just a part and parcel of his job can be a tad over the top. Many of the descriptions were very much like a screenplay directing actors what to do and how to look so less necessary here in the written medium of a novel than in something designed to be translated to screen. In terms of one of the climactic moment of the novel, well Sophie's big secret, the one she didn't want anyone to know, wasn't really surprising or even of a magnitude to create such shame so many years on. But these are little hiccups in a generally pleasing novel that lovers of chick lit will find to be a quick and delightful read about being true to yourself and being open to love and the hard work of caring deeply for another person. show less
In a Nutshell: Sorry, but mine is an outlier review. I expected a lot from this novel but my expectations and the story were on two different tracks that simply couldn’t merge.
Story:
As can be guessed, the question I raised at the end of the summary has a very easy and predictable answer. So this isn’t a book about what will happen at the end but how will the group reach the end of their journey in this story. The book has shades of ‘PS I Love You’ by Cecilia Ahern (another book I didn’t enjoy but it was better than this one).
The story can be divided into three broad phases:
1. Pre-trek
2. Trek
3. Post-trek
I enjoyed the first phase. It was pretty well-written and gave me a great idea of what to expect from the characters. From the second phase onwards, the writing took a downswing. There are many idiotic situations and over-the-top reactions, none of which help in endearing the characters to the reader. I found this phase pretty farfetched and stretched. I skipped and skimmed my way through the second phase because I was bored out of my head. The final phase is decent but it is too short to make much of an impact.
Considering the plot, I had expected the characters to make a deep impact on me. But none of them, except for Mike, and to a certain extent Vicky, seem believable and I couldn’t connect with any of them except Mike. (Pia would have been a great character to know, but she had hardly any active role in the story except as a constant presence in the background through her letters and the anecdotes.) Zaza was mostly infuriating, immature, and self-centred. The writing style also didn't work much for me because the chapters are quite short and when this combined with the constant change in first person povs, the voice changes become too frequent and muddling.
I was in the mood for something touching and light, so I had assumed this book would work well. I really tried to like it, but sometimes, expectations can be such a killjoy. I’ve never read a Giovanna Fletcher work, but looking at the ratings for this book and her other works, I think I need to try some other work of hers before I can make up my mind about being the right kind of reader for her works. This book has some pretty positive reviews, so please go through those before you take a call on this.
Overall, it may work for some readers, but really sorry, it didn’t work for me.
My thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph UK and NetGalley for the ARC of “Walking on Sunshine”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. show less
Story:
You could call this a story of three friends getting over some emotional losses with the help of each other.show more
Mike has lost the love of his life, his wife Pia, to cancer. He’s struggling on his way back to normalcy, if there can be a new “normal” after such a heartbreak.
His two best friends are Zaza and
Vicky. Zaza has commitment issues with everything except fashion and makeup brands. She is newly engaged but her commitment-phobia seems to be wrecking her potential happiness with Liam. Vicky is a stay-at-home mom who struggles with self-identity. She misses the days she had a career and can’t seem to reach the level of mom perfection she aspires to. In the process, she begrudges her husband Nick for his independent career away from the kids.
Pia has left the three of them a list of activities to be done after her death. The three friends use this list as a way of accepting the loss and healing their lives. But when the latest item on the list sends them on a trek to Peru, the trio faces some tricky situations and their bonds appear to start breaking. Will this trip heal them or split their group?
The book is written in the first person perspectives of the three friends: Mike, Zaza and Vicky.
As can be guessed, the question I raised at the end of the summary has a very easy and predictable answer. So this isn’t a book about what will happen at the end but how will the group reach the end of their journey in this story. The book has shades of ‘PS I Love You’ by Cecilia Ahern (another book I didn’t enjoy but it was better than this one).
The story can be divided into three broad phases:
1. Pre-trek
2. Trek
3. Post-trek
I enjoyed the first phase. It was pretty well-written and gave me a great idea of what to expect from the characters. From the second phase onwards, the writing took a downswing. There are many idiotic situations and over-the-top reactions, none of which help in endearing the characters to the reader. I found this phase pretty farfetched and stretched. I skipped and skimmed my way through the second phase because I was bored out of my head. The final phase is decent but it is too short to make much of an impact.
Considering the plot, I had expected the characters to make a deep impact on me. But none of them, except for Mike, and to a certain extent Vicky, seem believable and I couldn’t connect with any of them except Mike. (Pia would have been a great character to know, but she had hardly any active role in the story except as a constant presence in the background through her letters and the anecdotes.) Zaza was mostly infuriating, immature, and self-centred. The writing style also didn't work much for me because the chapters are quite short and when this combined with the constant change in first person povs, the voice changes become too frequent and muddling.
I was in the mood for something touching and light, so I had assumed this book would work well. I really tried to like it, but sometimes, expectations can be such a killjoy. I’ve never read a Giovanna Fletcher work, but looking at the ratings for this book and her other works, I think I need to try some other work of hers before I can make up my mind about being the right kind of reader for her works. This book has some pretty positive reviews, so please go through those before you take a call on this.
Overall, it may work for some readers, but really sorry, it didn’t work for me.
My thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph UK and NetGalley for the ARC of “Walking on Sunshine”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 14
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 1,082
- Popularity
- #23,754
- Rating
- 3.4
- Reviews
- 19
- ISBNs
- 89
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