About a Girl

Now that I'm on a roll with regular writing again (and it isn't even November!), I've decided to keep going. Plus, writing tends to always make me feel good about myself; I feel the most me when I'm typing or scribbling notes across any scrap paper, notebook and even parts of my body I can find. No joke, you put me on the plane for two hours heading to or from a work swing with a pen and no paper there will more than likely be calligraphy up and down my arms by the time we land.

It's not weird. 

Now, while I hoped you enjoyed that little fun fact about me, it isn't my main reason for today's post. Rather I just finished a lovely book by a lovely woman and I very much wanted to squeal about it.

The book in question is About a Girl by the wonderful Lindsey Kelk. It is a light-hearted romantic comedy sure to put both a tear in your eye and a laugh bubbling on your lips as you follow the ill-timed, ill-fated and miraculous misadventure of one Tess Brookes as she goes from having everything to suddenly having not that much at all. 

The story goes something a little like this:

Tess heads into work one cheery Monday to finally nab the big promotion at work that she'd been promised  months before only to find out she's been sacked, made 'redundant' per se, and forced to face the recession suddenly jobless. A confirmed workaholic, Tess has exactly two best friends (Amy, the bob-haired lovable nut, and Charlie, A.K.A the love of Tess' life since uni), and when things go down with Charlie Tess realises that not only has she sacrificed more of her life to her job than she ever knew but she also has no idea who she is. Insert major existential crisis here. Now, while Tess' quest for identity is quite normal and probably has happened to each of us before now, her way in dealing with it is anything but status quo:

Tess packs up her camera, takes a photography job meant for her psycho-bitch of a flatmate, and high-tails it straight to Hawaii and into a world of pineapples, gays and fashion mags. I know, I totally wish I had the balls to do it, too. But it's not all rain and sunshine (or, since it's Oahu in the Summer, all sunshine), and Tess suddenly has to keep up a fake identity when she barely has a real one, fend off the sizzling and all-too-welcome advances of hot journalist, Nick Miller, and take some damn good photos before all her new friends realise she isn't the high-class photographer they all think. 

Misadventure, laughter, tears and many fuzzy feelings will ensue, and I definitely recommend About a Girl to anybody in the mood for something fun to read that'll subtlety make you think about who you are as well and what makes you great. Lindsey Kelk is a wonderful writer, and as a fan of her previous I Heart series and standalone novel, The Single Girl's To-do List, I was all too eager for more and snapped up her latest ASAP.

Do yourselves a favour and give Lindsey whirl. You won't regret it.

Sam xox