BOOK REVIEW
Book: My Not So Perfect Life
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Reviewed by: Saniyah Eman
My Not So Perfect Life is a hilarious story of a young Somerset Girl who intends to become one of the biggest names in the London Marketing circle. If you need a good laugh for a good six hours, read it in one sitting (that’s what I did)!
The story revolves around the relationship between Katie (with her not so perfect life) and her boss, Demeter, (with a seemingly perfect life right down to the exquisite name). The romance element is supplied by Alex Astalis (also apparently perfect), another huge branding name in London who is the brother of the man who owns the company Katie works in as a junior level worker. She spends her days typing hand-written customer surveys, because her boss thinks hand-written surveys are oh-riginal.
The plot contains all the humor-generators one needs in Kinsella’s genre; the embarrassing but adorable Dad who is always coming up with weird get-rich-quick gigs, there’s the charming, gentle live-in girlfriend who comes up with good excuses when Katie needs them but otherwise is mostly busy baking or curling her hair (Or whatever Somerset live-in Girlfriends do to pass time. Soap Operas). Then, there’s the random YouTuber living next door to Katie’s place who has no job (And a great deal of - um - desire), and the other kid next door who is in a weird cult (I would say Illuminati but this cult sings and shouts yes! a lot and I don’t think the Illuminati do that). There are Katie’s London-born colleagues who do not know about her one-room rented flat that lacks important furnishings, and treat her as a part of themselves (them here meaning rich, privileged kids).
There are truly humungous mishaps like having to pick your lunch sandwich out of bins because your rich friend threw it there (mostly because you told her the sandwich was given to you by a passer-by who thought you looked “sick”).
Eventually Katie gets everything she wanted overnight, which felt a bit strange, seeing the book was about not so perfect lives, but I suppose the ending could not be helped with. After all, the story was never about deep grey areas of marketing and London, it was a comedy.
The story is not all that original, once you break it down, I give you that. It’s the sort of thing I call movie-books, stories that look naturally crafted for the screen instead of the page. There are loops here and there that leave you wondering whether this is not one of those Disney teen-coms about the excessively pretty girl who thinks she is ugly and needs a hot, rich young man to convince her otherwise.
Oh well, I can rant all I want, but the fact remains that Kinsella never promised scholarly wit; just a few laughs, a few jokes with a good, sweet ending, and she delivers on that promise very well in her latest book.