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abbywebb's review against another edition
4.0
A fun and whimsical chick-lit novel from a fellow Canadian. Although this was [a:Catherine McKenzie]'s first novel, it did not read like one. I was instantly focused on the words on the page in front of me up until the very end. In fact, the only reason I am up right now is because I stayed up late to finish the book and of course am now sleepless...
Anyway, this is a cute book about a 30-something struggling with life. Then one day she gets the opportunity of a lifetime: follow a strung out yet completely famous actress into rehab and come out with a career at the second best music magazine in the world! If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Of course there are lies, more lies, and of course many lies after that. Remaining true to the chick-lit genre, the heroine (no pun intended) Kate finds herself in a gaggle of lies and unpredictable situations. I have to say, though, that I like the way the author chose to play out each scenario in a way that solves a problem but doesn't make the main character look like a total ditz.
Great first novel - looking forward to the second one (which is hitting stands in 2011, btw).
Anyway, this is a cute book about a 30-something struggling with life. Then one day she gets the opportunity of a lifetime: follow a strung out yet completely famous actress into rehab and come out with a career at the second best music magazine in the world! If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Of course there are lies, more lies, and of course many lies after that. Remaining true to the chick-lit genre, the heroine (no pun intended) Kate finds herself in a gaggle of lies and unpredictable situations. I have to say, though, that I like the way the author chose to play out each scenario in a way that solves a problem but doesn't make the main character look like a total ditz.
Great first novel - looking forward to the second one (which is hitting stands in 2011, btw).
yolibear's review against another edition
4.0
Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you realize you out need to change. Even then you don't always know...
Good book, worth the read
Good book, worth the read
brisbookreviews's review against another edition
5.0
Spin is about Kate Standford, aspiring music journalist and (unknown to herself) an alcoholic.
The day before her 30th birthday she discovers that her favorite music magazine has an opening position. Still pretending to be apart of the college crowd, she decides to celebrate too much and blows her interview with a bad hangover. The magazine decides to give her an unusual second chance. Kate must go into rehab and do an exclusive story on another rehab patient- young celebrity starlet named Amber. If she succeeds, Kate gets the job. If she doesnt, Kate has to pay for her rehab. Kate jumps at the chance, thinking this will be a piece of cake. Boy was she wrong.
I loved this book. Spin got me out of a serious readers block. The moment I started, I couldnt put it down. It did remind me just a little of the Sandra Bullock movie "28 Days" but of course the plot was different. It had good humor, swoon moments, and also enlightening. The writing was fast paced and kept my interest throughout the entire book.
I highly recommend this book and will be looking for more from Catherine McKenzie
I had the pleasure of reading this galley via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
The day before her 30th birthday she discovers that her favorite music magazine has an opening position. Still pretending to be apart of the college crowd, she decides to celebrate too much and blows her interview with a bad hangover. The magazine decides to give her an unusual second chance. Kate must go into rehab and do an exclusive story on another rehab patient- young celebrity starlet named Amber. If she succeeds, Kate gets the job. If she doesnt, Kate has to pay for her rehab. Kate jumps at the chance, thinking this will be a piece of cake. Boy was she wrong.
I loved this book. Spin got me out of a serious readers block. The moment I started, I couldnt put it down. It did remind me just a little of the Sandra Bullock movie "28 Days" but of course the plot was different. It had good humor, swoon moments, and also enlightening. The writing was fast paced and kept my interest throughout the entire book.
I highly recommend this book and will be looking for more from Catherine McKenzie
I had the pleasure of reading this galley via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
rebroxannape's review against another edition
3.0
“So, most days you need something to make you feel happy?” I knew it was a trick! “I guess.” “And if you weren’t drinking, would you be unhappy most days?” My eyes wander to the oblong window above Saundra’s head. The sky is gray and cloudy. “I don’t know . . . I really don’t think of myself as unhappy . . .” “Katie, when you’re using alcohol regularly to alter your mood, it’s generally an indication that there’s something that needs to be altered.”This one started out full of promise and possibilities, and was very reminiscent of Rachel’s Holiday, the almost classic Marian Keyes novel. But because I couldn’t help but compare them, it was ultimately disappointing. Rachel’s Holiday was so deep, dark, and hilarious. There were definitely some good things about this one. The premise was a great idea and roped me in right away.
Kate, a talented but struggling writer is in denial about her alcoholism. When she is invited to interview for a position in a respected music review magazine, The Line, she is thrilled. This is her dream job. She is invited by a friend to go out to celebrate this and her upcoming birthday the night before the interview. She puts up a weak resistance knowing she has to be on her game for the interview, but goes out anyway for “just one drink.” She shows up at the interview still drunk from the night before and simultaneously hung over. I’ll draw a veil. But when Amber Shepard a young star and current tabloid fodder enters rehab, they remember Kate. One of The Line’s affiliates is a celebrity gossip rag and they tap her to follow Amber into rehab to get the goods on the young erratic “It Girl.” If she does a good job, The Line will hire her for their magazine.
Written in first person by Kate, it was funny, serious, and well-written. I liked her voice. But the book doesn’t go deep enough. It’s kind of vague about many things. For example, how much does Kate really drink? We know it’s a lot. She randomly tells the doctor she drinks 2 bottles of wine every day which is what she guesses would qualify to get her into Cloudspin Oasis, the rehab facility, but is she lying or telling the truth? Kate is a liar about many things. It would have been effective if we find out that Kate is either lying to the reader, or if the reader is clear about the truth. We meet a few of the patients but we never get their journeys. They really don't add anything to the story. Of course, get to know Amber as Kate is successful in befriending her and gaining her trust. Amber is a good character, but Kate is warned not to let her get too close because she is dangerous. That knowledge keeps us suspicious and watchful of Amber, but nothing really plays out.
Amber is famously entangled with Connor Parks, another hot movie actor who plays the Young James Bond in a movie franchise. He follows her to rehab (why?) and it is when he enters the scene, about halfway through, that I started losing interest. It was one inauthenticity too many. First off that would never be allowed. Things became just so facile and contrived. Connor has a personal assistant who is allowed to enter rehab with him to look after him. What? Wouldn’t happen. He is Kate’s love interest and boring. I just can’t invest in a romance where the guy is an enabler of a bad person and addict just because he is an old-school friend. It conflicts with his character big time. The "why" of their relationship is a mystery and could have been intriguing but ended up to be more unexplored potential. Kate is able to smuggle in an Apple iTouch to submit copy to the gossip rag and is never caught. Wouldn’t happen. The doctors and therapists are naive and gullible. They seem incapable of holding anyone’s feet to the fire. There is no meaningful therapy that goes on. We never really get to the source of Kate’s addiction. Her friends, both enabling and disapproving, visit her but nothing comes of it. There was some hope when Kate’s eccentric and permissive old hippie parents were introduced. Failing anything interesting happening with her friends, I was hoping for some drama, revelations, and secrets uncovered involving them but it just fizzled as well. It looked like something might come of her relationship with her hostile and jealous sister, but again it came to nothing. We never get to the pain. Once Kate is out of detox which if Kate is anything to go by is no big deal, there are no struggles stemming from being cut off from alcohol and forced sobriety. When she finishes her 30 days and is released there is no real battle to remain sober. She does fall off the wagon once but just climbs back on again and all is well. Easy peasy.
Once out of rehab and sober, Kate does have one problem. How can she betray Amber who she likes and is now her friend? This is what triggers her short relapse. And then Amber finds out. This part of the book, the last 20% or so, where Kate's dilemma is resolved in a satisfactory way, is pretty good.
I gave the book 3 stars because I kept reading and didn’t end up skipping through to get to the end. It kept my interest, but it just didn’t fulfill the potential that it promised in the beginning. For such a long book, it took too many shortcuts.
https://rebekahsreadingsandwatchings.com/books/
penguini1976's review against another edition
1.0
I stopped reading this. I really liked the story but got sick of the bad language.
rmarcin's review against another edition
3.0
Kate is a mess. She dreams of being a writer, and has landed an interview for her dream job. But prior to her interview, she gets so drunk the night before that she is still drunk at her interview. Obviously, things don’t go well. Yet, she is given another chance, if she writes a gossip column about a star in rehab. This means she also has to go to rehab, and ends up finding out a lot about herself.
I don’t enjoy books where the protagonist is a drunk, although Kate does eventually get clean. So that likely skewed my opinion of the book. I did enjoy that Kate had to go through low points before things got better. This is McKenzie’s debut novel, and I have read many of her other books, and have enjoyed them.
I don’t enjoy books where the protagonist is a drunk, although Kate does eventually get clean. So that likely skewed my opinion of the book. I did enjoy that Kate had to go through low points before things got better. This is McKenzie’s debut novel, and I have read many of her other books, and have enjoyed them.
smallafterall's review against another edition
3.0
Rehab portion has echoes of all the other rehab stories you may have read: All Fall Down, A Million Little Pieces, etc. Likable protagonist. Met the author of this one at books by the banks and she insisted this was not chick lit. I agree it doesn't do the brand name dropping super fluffy things that some chick lot does, but this is certainly not heavy literary stuff. Enjoyable read with not too much ridiculousness.
gleefulreader's review against another edition
2.0
A book that fails to fulfill its promise on two fronts: not light enough in subject matter to be a true fluffy chick-lit type read yet not aggressive enough with its subject matter to address the issue in a satisfactiry manner. All this, assuming you can get past the unreasonable premise (twenty-something Katie gets rip-roaringly drunk (again) the night before her big interview at a music magazine. She doesn't get the job but they do offer her a chance to redeem herself and a second chance at the job. The catch is that she has to go to rehab (which, surprise!, she really needs) where a major starlet will also be checked in, spy on her, and write a tell-all article at the end of the month. Needless to stay, Kate and the starlet become friends and drama ensues.)
The book falls into the category (albeit uncomfortably) of an unchallenging beach read. There's a bit of romance (because what alcoholic doesn't come out of rehab with an attractive, well-off, understanding boyfriend?), amusing observations on the gossip/TMZ/modern celebrity culture and some Bridget Jones-type hilarity, particularly with respect to the observations of the 12-step plan and life in a rehab/therapy environment. But overall there was so much more the author could have done to elevate this book beyond what it was and I felt that it was a missed opportunity by the author. The reality is that many people leave university and, particularly those that live in the city in jobs in the arts and media, flirt with alcoholism, regardless of whether they realize it. The partying that occurs almost every night. The social life that revolves around the next bar or club or party. The constant water-cooler talk of the big nights out and the hangovers. While most will eventually leave this life behind as they settle down in their 30s, it would have been a more interesting story to look at how those patterns are set up throughout young adulthood and those that don't escape from them. This, to me, would have been far more fascinating than the half-explanation/blame of coming from a home that normalized drinking, as written by McKenzie. This could have been written to explore those themes while still maintaining the amusing Bridget Jones-seque qualities.
While we see Katie grow somewhat during rehab, and McKenzie does a very good job of showing the effects of the whole late-20s party scene, I never really felt any resolution of Katie coming to terms with her alcoholism. Since that was a major plot point in the book it needed more fleshing out than it really was at the end of the book. There were some other dangling plot lines - such as the family members that make a brief appearance before pretty well disappearing. And oddly, we never get a real sense of Katie's appearance. McKenzie describes the other characters fairly well, but with the exception of Katie's weight (we are repeatedly told how she loses weight during her time in rehab) we don't get a real sense of exactly what she looks, a fact that I realized was driving me nuts in the latter half of the book.
Overall, one of those books that is frustrating for what it could have been and wasn't.
The book falls into the category (albeit uncomfortably) of an unchallenging beach read. There's a bit of romance (because what alcoholic doesn't come out of rehab with an attractive, well-off, understanding boyfriend?), amusing observations on the gossip/TMZ/modern celebrity culture and some Bridget Jones-type hilarity, particularly with respect to the observations of the 12-step plan and life in a rehab/therapy environment. But overall there was so much more the author could have done to elevate this book beyond what it was and I felt that it was a missed opportunity by the author. The reality is that many people leave university and, particularly those that live in the city in jobs in the arts and media, flirt with alcoholism, regardless of whether they realize it. The partying that occurs almost every night. The social life that revolves around the next bar or club or party. The constant water-cooler talk of the big nights out and the hangovers. While most will eventually leave this life behind as they settle down in their 30s, it would have been a more interesting story to look at how those patterns are set up throughout young adulthood and those that don't escape from them. This, to me, would have been far more fascinating than the half-explanation/blame of coming from a home that normalized drinking, as written by McKenzie. This could have been written to explore those themes while still maintaining the amusing Bridget Jones-seque qualities.
While we see Katie grow somewhat during rehab, and McKenzie does a very good job of showing the effects of the whole late-20s party scene, I never really felt any resolution of Katie coming to terms with her alcoholism. Since that was a major plot point in the book it needed more fleshing out than it really was at the end of the book. There were some other dangling plot lines - such as the family members that make a brief appearance before pretty well disappearing. And oddly, we never get a real sense of Katie's appearance. McKenzie describes the other characters fairly well, but with the exception of Katie's weight (we are repeatedly told how she loses weight during her time in rehab) we don't get a real sense of exactly what she looks, a fact that I realized was driving me nuts in the latter half of the book.
Overall, one of those books that is frustrating for what it could have been and wasn't.
lisad5's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.0
mellabella's review against another edition
4.0
Cute read about Kate who blows an interview for her dream job working at a music mag. She blows this interview because she is still a wreck from last nights binge drinking. This book was definitely chick lit. But, not as cutesy (even with a happy ending) as it could have been. Kate winds up going undercover (turns out there is still a chance to get a job at the magazine) to spy on a starlet with substance abuse problems. Winds up befriending said starlet and falling in love with the starlets boyfriends manager. We learn about Kate's past, her family and why she drinks. She is actually a likeable, flawed character. Very good playlist at the very end too.