I recently had my first DNF of 2025, a suspense novel featuring vile, hateful characters and y'all I just couldn't even. What's a girl to do? Well this girl decided to dive head first into a pile of cotton candy fluff and it was just what the doctor ordered.
Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up by
Alexandra Potter was the inspiration for a short-lived American sitcom,
Not Yet Dead, that lasted two seasons. I never watched the show, but based on the synopsis of it I'm fairly confident in saying it diverges wildly from the book - other than some of the characters sharing the same names and the obituary writing job thing.
Nell is on the other side of forty and her life has imploded. Her business (a bookstore / café) went bust right along with her engagement. She's now single, broke, and with no other option than to tuck tail and head back to London. A couple of problems with that is she has no prospect of a job, she's broke, and rents in London are through the roof. All her friends are happily married with a couple of kids meaning not only is she a fifth wheel, she can't impose on them by couch surfing until she gets her shit together. Nothing for it, she answers an ad to rent a room from a wound-tight eco-warrior wannabe who controls the thermostat like the Gestapo, borrows a little money from her parents, and tries to work her contacts to find a job. Which she does - writing obituaries. That's how she meets Cricket, an 80-something widow with her own challenges. The two become fast friends and naturally help each other heal and commiserate along the way.
I came back to the romance genre in the late 1990s through Chick Lit, and that's what this is. Chick Lit with a 40-something heroine. She wants a husband and children, and well life hasn't exactly turned out the way she's planned. Having been in the States (New York, then California) for the last several years, she's now back home to lick her wounds and has discovered life (along with her friends and family) has kept on moving along without her.
It's a very character driven read and you're inside Nell's head for the duration. If you don't find her funny and interesting from the jump, save yourself some time and DNF early. I've always been one of those readers who can find Chick Lit great fun so long as I don't consume a steady diet of it, and this book largely worked for me - but like a lot of romantic comedy stuff these days, readers should be warned there's some heavy themes underpinning the story that, even with foreshadowing, still pop out to slam the brakes on the overall fluffy mood. That said, the author does say some interesting things about the expectations placed on women by themselves and society that still stand out even with the lighter tone. I had a good time with this and it's a crackin' good listen on audiobook, which I highly recommend.
Content warning: infertility, miscarriage
Final Grade = B+
Everybody's favorite rich girl social media influencer and part-time serial killer, Kitty Collins, is back for
her second adventure in
I Bet You'd Look Good in a Coffin by
Katy Brent.
Poor Kitty. She really doesn't want to kill men, but they make abstinence so darn difficult! She's trying to break her social media addiction, has pretty much stopped her work as an influencer, is attending an anger management group, and settling into a blissful existence with her boyfriend Charlie. A Chick Lit version of Dexter, Kitty only ever killed men who really, really deserved to die but she's determined to be good - until a social media influencer, a misogynistically vile incel going by the name of "Blaze Bundy" starts targeting her. On top of that her vulnerable gang rape survivor friend has just declared she's fallen in love with her therapist (but it's OK since he's no longer seeing me as a patient, so why aren't you happy for us Kitty?!) and Kitty's estranged, fabulously wealthy mother is getting married to a man Kitty didn't know existed until the wedding invitation showed up in the mail.
Can you take this book seriously? Absolutely not. Kitty continues to think she's smart but bungles her way through her murder spree - and in this day and age of cell phone tracking and DNA it's a wonder the cops don't at least know she exists. But it's not that kind of book. It's a female rage book with an undercurrent of dark humor - and that's either going to work for you or not. It naturally doesn't take Kitty long to get up to her old tricks and soon her relationship with Charlie is on life support. Be advised this does not stand alone well at all, with events from the first book playing a heavy role and the ending got a little bit "out there" even for me - the moral of the story apparently being the family that kills and covers up murders together apparently stays together. But it all goes down like a candy-flavored cocktail even when it turns bleakly dark. The ending isn't entirely "happy" as far as the romance goes, but the author leaves the door wide open for potential future books. It's not high art but I had a good time reading it and inhaled it in a couple of greedy gulps. Also, and this cannot be overstated - terrible, awful, asshole men getting exactly what they deserve....
Content warning: Murder, violence, attempted rape
Final Grade = B
2 comments:
Sorry about the DNF, but yay for the candy floss* hitting the spot.
* As a Brit 'cotton candy' just sounds like it would be a horrible texture, yeah I know it's the same stuff, and yeah I don't actually like eating more than a mouthful these days, but still.
Gotta say: neither of these appeals to me in the slightest, but hey! They hit for you, and that's nothing to sniff at--we all need to boost our reading mojo in whichever way works for each of us--and sometimes, fluff is what we need.
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