Bad Heir Day

This is one of those quick read books where you don’t get attached to the characters (possibly because they lack depth) and can easily put the book down and not go back to it for days. I found the characters quite annoying and not in a good way. The main character Anna, is a complete wimp who I imagined to look like some frumpy, put upon 1950’s housewife, not a young woman hunting for the perfect career as a writer and a husband to go with it. Also, she claims she wants to be a writer but is too cowardly to get off her butt and give it a go, so instead is lead/pushed into becoming a nanny, come dogsbody, by a forceful stranger called Geri, whom she meets at a wedding.
Anna’s new boss, Cassandra, is a drunken, evil wench with no show more clue about the real world and just annoyed the hell out of me. The parts of the story that revolve around Cassandra seem to be just an endless list of designer names and sexual bitching that I felt were bulked out just to add pages to the book. As for the ‘dashing’ Jamie, well a goldfish has more personality and charm, although the reason why he is such a wet blanket is strangely revealed later in the book. However, the sudden role reversals between Anna, Jamie, Geri and a new male character (forgotten his name already) towards the end of the book is rushed, and very unconvincing, no-one in their right mind would live like this and is the worst version of a ‘happy ever after’ I have ever come across! All in all a waste of a read and I am so glad I did not buy this rubbish. show less

On the surface, this seemed like the type of book I would enjoy. I love British chick lit in general, especially Marian Keyes. I love books about nannies. And I love books where you see women progress from dashing but scumbag boyfriends to true soul mates, even if they are trite at times.

My expectations weren't really that high -- I wasn't looking for high literature, I was looking for something light-hearted and fun to read in the bathtub. And while the book started out on that track, it ended up going in so many directions at once that the fun was lost.

Yes, the book is about a woman who is jilted by her dashing but scumbag boyfriend, and turns to being a nanny as a transition. But it's also about the woman she works for, who's show more struggling with alcoholism and writers block and a troubled marriage. And her husband, who is an aging rock star who likes to molest the nannies and leaves his wife for an air-headed starlet who pretends to write, but doesn't really. And also about some people she met at the wedding she attends in the beginning of the book with the scumbag, including the interesting PR girl who sleeps with the groom on his wedding night, and a handsome if odd young man who is acting like one of the caterers but is really heir to the castle the wedding is held in. And did I mention that the original woman in question is also trying to write a novel, and that's why she wanted to work for the crazy woman with writers block?

Sadly, I haven't mentioned half of the characters and plotlines crammed into this book, but suffice it to say that none of them were well-developed. show less

Well, despite having looked forward to reading this, I was disappointed. Anna was just too dumb for words and Cassandra just too distasteful. Zak needed discipline worse than any child I've run across in fiction-land recently, and seeing him not get it was frustrating. I finished it, but can't rate it very high at all.

Good for mindless girly romance.