Book Review: The Personal Shopper by Carmen Reid

I am pleased to be welcoming Carmen Reid and the blog tour for her novel, The Personal Shopper.

Meet Annie Valentine: stylish, savvy, multi-tasker extraordinaire. As a personal shopper in a swanky London store, Annie can be relied on to solve everyone’s problems . . . except her own.

Because as a busy single mum to two kids, Annie’s realised there’s a gap in her life as well as her wardrobe. But with her heart still hurting from losing the love of her life, Annie’s discovered that finding the perfect partner is turning out to be so much trickier than finding the perfect pair of shoes!

Can she source a genuine classic? A lifelong investment? Or will Annie realise that her perfect man is already sitting on the front row of her life…

*****

Annie Valentine is stylish, savvy and great at her job, even if her boss thinks otherwise.

Being a single mother, she does the best she can.

What she is missing is a man.

Can she find the right one? Can he live up to the lost love of her life? Has the perfect love been in front of her all along?

The Personal Shopper was my introduction to Annie Valentine and to Carmen Reid. Although this book did take me a couple of chapters to get into, once I did, I couldn’t put it down and read it in one sitting.

This novel was a lot of fun but deals with sensitive themes well.

Annie feels like a real, relatable character. She has a need to be control and at work, she is. She’s straight talking and successful. However, due to past events, there is a vulnerable side to her that she tries to hide. This possibly leads to her making some questionable choices in her personal life.

The supporting characters are brilliant. Connor is a hoot (we all need a Connor I think,) and Ed – he’s lovely. As for Grey and Donna. No comment. Haha.

Told mostly from Annie’s point of view, I feel that the plot was well developed and moves at a good pace overall.

There are some laugh out loud moments where I found myself grinning madly and then the story would shift and I’d be feeling the sadness along with the characters. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster.

OK, no more as I don’t want to spoil it.

The Personal Shopper is a fun, emotional read that had me reading into the early hours. It would make a perfect holiday companion or failing that, a great escape away from the horrible weather.

(Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources and Boldwood Books for the advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.)

About Carmen Reid: 

Carmen Reid is the bestselling author of numerous woman’s fiction titles including the Personal Shopper series starring Annie Valentine.

After taking a break from writing she is back, introducing her hallmark feisty women characters to a new generation of readers.

She lives in Glasgow with her husband and children.

Say hello via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Bookbub.

The Personal Shopper, part of the Annie Valentine series was released by Boldwood Books. Click to buy on Amazon UK and Waterstones. 

by

Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.