Book Review: The Personal Shopper by Carmen Reid

Today’s book review is a nice light-hearted romp into the magical world of shopping in high-fashion London. My review copy of The Personal Shopper was a freebie from Amazon; the review request came through the author, Carmen Reid, and her husband, Thomas Quinn.

I met Thomas last year during his attempt to get a fabulous idea up and running online: fed up with “required reading” lists, Thomas set up a site in which readers would be able to submit their own list of the Top 100 to-be-read books. It was a clever and interesting idea, and – never one to miss out on an opportunity to tell people what to read – I dutifully submitted my list. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t catch on – but Thomas’s blog is still online, and definitely worth checking out. But I wanted to give a shout out to Thomas for it anyway – and if anyone out there likes the idea (and you should), leave a comment and let him know! (BTW: Don’t get upset if you don’t see a lot of comments; J-E.com hasn’t been getting many comments lately. That’s a testament to me, not the idea TQ!)

Now on to the book review.

The Personal Shopper is the tale of Annie Valentine, a single mum of two who works at a posh London department store as a – duh – personal shopper. She helps the extremely wealthy (and the occasional friend/colleague) invent and reinvent themselves through clothes and accessories. She’s a sassy, saucy, sweetheart of a character, which of course means she runs afoul of a horrid boss, well-meaning but not-quite-right men, and the occasional whiny customer more often than she should. She is struggling to give her two children everything – without the means to do so consistently. Which of course brings on drama (of both the tearful and laughter-full kind) of its own. She’s also struggling to figure out what she wants from – and for – her own life. She loves helping people express themselves through clothes, using wardrobe-as-weapon to help women (and the occasional man) realize who they are, and who they want to be – and she uses the tricks of her trade on herself as often as on others.

The ups and downs of Annie’s life are familiar – both in this genre of book and to women everywhere. From teenage drama with daughter Lana to work challenges due to a snarky boss threatened by her success to man troubles as she struggles to balance what she thinks she wants with what she really needs, Annie is presented as a bit of an Everywoman – albeit one with WAY better shoes than most of us. She’s a likeable enough character, although I must confess I occasionally found myself wanting to hold my hands over her mouth to stop her from calling everyone “Babes”. I must confess that I also occasionally found myself shaking my head at the troubles she got herself into. She’s a very human character, full of foibles – she means well and has the best of intentions, but we all know where that road takes you…

All in all this was a cute, fun, light, comic tale of one woman’s efforts to hold it all together, all the time. We’ve all been there – trying too hard, pushing ourselves into something we would recognize as not quite right if we only had the time and/or perspective to stand back and actually look before we leaped. The supporting characters were, to me, the meat and potatoes of this one – there are a lot of flamboyantly colorful eccentricities dangled throughout the book, and they kept me reading even in the midst of the occasional Annie eye-roll. 🙂