Title: Christmas Shopaholic
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Series: Shopaholic #9
Both charming and irritating aspects
I would like to thank Sophie Kinsella, Random House, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I’m late to the party on this one, it’s been out for over two months now (as of writing this review). But I’m rather glad I waited till this week—Christmas week—to read it, finishing on Christmas Eve. *checks time* Well, Christmas, actually. This book can be read at any time, of course, but reading it during the actual holiday in question added to the atmosphere, I felt.
There were both charming and irritating elements. Becky’s generous and open-minded nature really warmed my heart and went a long way in endearing me to a character I found annoying in general. I know the whole series is—ostensibly—about Becky and her insane spending habits, and I knew to expect it, yet watching her heedlessly buy and buy and buy and buy and hearing about all the useless junk she’s got crammed into hidey-holes in her house so no one will know what a nut job she is made me feel physically ill. It’s supposed to be funny, I guess, but it’s not. And the reasons why she buys most of those things, the justifications…just ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Add in her keen interest in fashion and style trends, and I know she is not someone I would be friends with. Luckily the story focused quite a bit on her family drama, so that was able to distract me from the parts of Becky’s personality that irritated me.
I don’t really have much more to say. Starting the novel with Becky doing some online shopping probably wasn’t a great way to hook readers—I’d have stopped then and there if I didn’t need to review it. And I wish Luke didn’t have such a bland personality, but maybe he needs to be bland to counterbalance Becky’s exuberance. Also, if you’re not familiar with the series, you may get a little overwhelmed by the volume of characters to keep track of. I was long past halfway before I started getting who was who straight in my head.
Oh, and I wasn’t at all surprised when Becky told Luke she’s pregnant at the very end. It’s not much of a spoiler, you can see it coming from sixty miles away. I was wrong in predicting how it would be announced, though. When she had so much trouble finding Luke the “perfect” Christmas present…and mentioned that they wanted another child but hadn’t been able to conceive yet…well, naturally I thought her pregnancy would end up being the perfect present for him. But that’s not how it went down, and I can’t decide if that would have been better than what actually happened or not.
If watching someone willfully hemorrhage money doesn’t bother you, and if you don’t mind a narrative that’s all over the place—poking fun at hipster and vegan culture; trying to legitimize a meaningless, made-up word to avoid being sued; joining and revolutionizing a billiards club just to enter the damn raffle; getting locked in a pet store on Christmas Eve and trying to escape via the friggin chimney; getting stalked and harrassed by an ex-boyfriend’s psycho girlfriend—then you might like this book.
Overall—I knew this book wouldn’t be a good fit for me, but I wanted to try it anyway…and I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t a bad book, some readers may really love it, but it did not suit my personal taste.
