Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Hester Browne - The Little Lady Agency

When sweet, naive Melissa seeks a job with her old Home Economics teacher she is half way through the interview before it dawns on her that Mrs. McKinnon isn't interested in her cookery skills, but is in fact running an escort agency.
Melissa panics, but she needs the cash - and what harm can providing lonely men with stimulating conversation over dinner do? More exciting still, she'll get to wear a disguise...
Enter her alter ego: Honey. As flirty and feminine as a Bond girl, as confident and sexy as Mary Poppins in silk stockings, Honey brings out a side to Melissa she never knew she had. A side that will get her into hot water, (and out of it) and that she'll never want to lose...

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The first chapter tells pretty much everything there is to know about Melissa Romney-Jones aka Honey. Graduated from art school Melissa's a reliable, sensible, shy, insecure person, failing at her jobs. She's a domestic goddess, the nice girl next door always looking on the bright side.
Then there ist her other side, Honey. A blond whigged whirlwind in silmk stockings, married 15 times with over fity men she'd dated.
That´s what the book is about.

Melissa lost her job at an estate agency and receives a business card of a former teacher who's running a "temping agency" which pretty fast emerges to be an upmarket escort agency. After the second date ends with a punch into the males face an idea is born: The Little Lady Agency.
You need a girlfriend to present at your company's festivities, a woman pretending to be your wife ? Someone to organize a party or your life ? A personal makeover ? All is available at The Little Lady Agency. Everything except Sex.

When Melissa's or better Honey's business begins to run she goes disguised to a party arranged by her former employee. There she meets Jonathan Riley, the American new managing director from New York. Not thinking much he gives him his business card and the next day he calls her for help and an absolutely, predictable story unfolds not spearing the reader an easy happy missing some twist and turns.

This was my very first excursion into the chick lit genre. If it weren´t for someone else I probably would have never read the book and it feels like expected: Lots of chocolate, lots of inseurity on the female side, lots of corniness.
However, Hester Browne created a very likeable, sweet character in Melissa and her two friends. She stays a bit on the surface of the british etiquette and I so wished she would have gone deeper into this but as for the American character in the book she might have loosened the etiquette.
I'm unsure if a chick lit has to be funny, as for that, I didn't find anything funny. The book´s probably good in the chick lit genre but but for me, the mystery-thriller freak it's just too much above the surface.


Rating: Won't give one because I don't want to judge on a genre I am not well-read in.
Visit Hester Browne.

ISBN-13: 9781416527268
ISBN-10: 1416527265
Publisher: Pocket
Publication Date: 9/5/2006
Pages: 384
Book Type: Paperback

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