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dee9401's review
3.0
I read a review of this book while checking Twitter in the British Library, interesting enough, while working on my own novel. I was taking a short break and stumbled across a review. It sounded fun and I had spent quite a bit of time in London over the past few years that I knew a bunch of the locations mentioned in the book. So, I bought the eBook on Amazon and started it after I got home.
It's a quick read about two flat mates who have horrible jobs and how each of them deals with the peculiarities and demands of the corporate arena in one of the world's most expensive cities at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis.
The story is a little too neatly packaged and the ending is tied up to perfectly, almost begging for a Hollywood adaptation with the main three characters played by the latest top actors. Worse, the author spends much of the first half of the book providing excessive description of people and scenes. It's kind of what they taught me in my first writing class and which every person who's read stuff I wrote tells me to cut out. Let the reader fill in the details, you don't need to excessively describe each room, person, or situation. But, having said that, by about 1/2 through, the flow accelerates and the description fades into the background. The author hits his pace at this point and it's a fast dash to the end.
Overall, I liked the book. If I had to be honest, part of my like was knowing where the action was taking place. I felt like I knew each of the areas described, many I'd been to or around. But I wanted to start the book and I wanted to finish it, so that makes it worthwhile for me.
It's a quick read about two flat mates who have horrible jobs and how each of them deals with the peculiarities and demands of the corporate arena in one of the world's most expensive cities at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis.
The story is a little too neatly packaged and the ending is tied up to perfectly, almost begging for a Hollywood adaptation with the main three characters played by the latest top actors. Worse, the author spends much of the first half of the book providing excessive description of people and scenes. It's kind of what they taught me in my first writing class and which every person who's read stuff I wrote tells me to cut out. Let the reader fill in the details, you don't need to excessively describe each room, person, or situation. But, having said that, by about 1/2 through, the flow accelerates and the description fades into the background. The author hits his pace at this point and it's a fast dash to the end.
Overall, I liked the book. If I had to be honest, part of my like was knowing where the action was taking place. I felt like I knew each of the areas described, many I'd been to or around. But I wanted to start the book and I wanted to finish it, so that makes it worthwhile for me.
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