The blurb:
It started with the Hemsworths. Now, Byron Bay local Aimee Maguire is about to lose everything because she can't afford to pay the rent. Her engagement is also on an official time-out since her fiance doesn’t know what he wants. The last thing she needs is a surprise visit from her micro-influencer niece looking to 'build her brand'.
Her arrival sets off a chain of events that ends with Aimee tangled up with a group of influencers-turned-reality TV stars, exposing her to the absolute worst of humanity. But somewhere amid this mother of all messes there just might be a silver lining Aimee has been searching for. All she needs to do is embrace the one thing she's been fighting so hard against—change.
The length of time it took me to read this book kind of indicates that it wasn't for me—it's the first book this year that I really, seriously considered DNFing.
Part of the reason is I think there's a mismatch between the 'sell' of the book, i.e. the cover and the blurb, and the actual story. To me, the 'sell' is tilted towards romance with a tinge of chick lit1, but that's not really what happens in the story. It also takes a pretty good slab of the 400+ pages to make that clear, so I did feel like a bit of bait-and-switch was going on here...I was expecting a romance and got something else.
The story itself veered around in tone, from a pretty straightforward and realistic opening with an understated, laconic sort of sense of humour to something much broader and more absurd, with a bunch of clueless idiots trying to act as drug mules and buyers, and the conclusion felt rushed and unearned (and owing a debt to Muriel's Wedding, with Muriel and Rhonda driving out of Porpoise Spit—at least that's the image my mind immediately went to as I was reading).
Honestly, not my favourite read of 2025 by a long chalk, and the fact that all the cover blurbs are from breakfast tv/radio people should have clued me in before I even cracked the cover.
1I am not a huge fan of the phrase 'chick lit', and it's largely (and rightly, I think) fallen out of favour. But I don't know that anything has replaced it as a useful descriptor for the genre. And there is a lot of it around, from Bridget Jones's Diary onwards. It puts women at the centre of both the story and the audience, it's unashamedly aimed at being a fun, light read. Usually some romance in the plot, but HEAs aren't guaranteed or even always necessary for the novel's goals.
Started: 12 July 2025
Finished: 25 July 2025
Back home.
More books.