Confessions of a Shopaholic: A Book Review

Genre: Comedy/Romance

Reading Level: Ages 18 and up

Summary: Meet Rebecca Bloomwood.

She’s a journalist. She spends her working life telling others how to manage their money.
She spends her leisure time … shopping.

Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems. She knows she should stop, but she can’t. She tries Cutting Back, she tries Making More Money. But neither seems to work. The stories she concocts become more and more fantastic as she tries to untangle her increasingly dire financial difficulties. Her only comfort is to buy herself something – just a little something…

Can Becky ever escape from this dream world, find true love, and regain the use of her Switch card?

Confessions of a Shopaholic… the perfect pick me up for when it’s all hanging in the (bank) balance.

My Review: This frothy chick-lit novel is easy and fun to read. It's also amazingly British, so if you are a fan of British comedy it's an added bonus to your overall enjoyment. Sophie Kinsella set's up several hilarious situations, one after another, for our heroine Becca Bloomwood to work through. Becca's struggle with her desire to shop while a vast cloud of debt hangs over her head, carries much of the plot. Kinsella adds a tiny sub-plot near the end where Becca finds a financial article that she cares enough to write about, but it's added so late into the book you don't really care about it. All that I cared about at least was if Becca would finally be able to overcome her addiction to shopping. Seeing as there are 6 more books in the series you can imagine I was somewhat disappointed.

On the upside Becca Bloomwood was a fantastic narrator, her thought process was hilarious! I loved all of the wildly imaginative scenario's she thought up in her head, and how things never turned out like she expected. As a person who is frequently prone to similar mistakes, It was fun to find I wasn't the only one. :P I enjoyed Becca's friend, she was a nicely written character, in so much as she seemed like a good friend to have although she did unintentionally feed into our heroines addiction. All of the side characters had their own special flair, even though they were not that fleshed out, and fit well into the story. There was only one character I really did not like, and it was unfortunately Becca's love interest Luke Brandon. I found him to be amazingly boring, rude, and overall just not that fantastic. He was a bit of a jerk to Becca, I enjoyed that she called him out on his behavior earlier in the novel, but their romance in the end seemed far to rushed for my liking. I was hoping they wouldn't get together, even though I knew they would.

Content: Harsh language, and sexual references and situations.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Recommend: For Chick lit fans.