Evie’s Little Black Book
by Hannah Pearl
Goodreads
Amazon US / UK
Is hunting down every man you’ve kissed the answer to finding Mr. Right?
When Evie is invited to the wedding of the guy she’d fancied throughout her teens, it’s the final straw. What’s wrong with her and why can’t she keep a man?
In between consoling herself with ice cream and chocolate, and sobbing her heart out to her cousin Chamaine, Evie has a brainwave – and it all centers around her ‘little black book’ (well, more floral patterned notebook really) – which contains the details of every man she’s ever kissed or dated. Perhaps the cure for her disastrous love life has been nestled within its pages all along …
Does Evie’s little black book really hold the answers, or will she learn that exes are exes for a reason?
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
‘What you need next,’ she declared, ‘is new underwear. I always feel better when I’m wearing really sexy knickers.’ She pulled the top of her pants up over her trousers to show me. I could see what looked like a piece of leopard print string, and I presumed her taste in underwear was a little skimpier than mine. An elderly gentleman on the next table choked on his tea.
‘I like a lot of different types of women.’ That was an understatement. I suspected that Matt and George had very few types of women they didn’t like. ‘But you know what I find most attractive of all in women?’ he asked me. I shook my head, wondering whether he’d be offended if I’d answered with my first response of a vagina and a pulse.
If you want people to notice you, you have to show them that you have something worth noticing.
I wasn’t a pretty crier. My nose was running and I was taking big, heaving gulps of air every few seconds to power the tears. Jake walked to the cupboard, opened it and handed me a huge bar of Dairy Milk. ‘I’m sure Bea won’t mind you raiding her stash,’ he said. ‘This seems like an emergency.’
My Review:
This was a slow moving yet thoughtful and often humorous read that chronicled a woman’s efforts to examine her past to recoup and repair her tattered identity by reaching back to examine what had transpired during and after her previous crushes, attractions, and relationships with men. Much of the narrative is interior as she works through her memories and observations of the past while also dealing with the present and meeting new and more interesting people while learning to trust again. The writing was insightful and observant with frequent lashings of slyly amusing dry wit.
Ms. Pearl had obviously done her research and compiled the easiest and clearest representation of how an intelligent woman would allow herself to be treated in such a heinous and dastardly manner. She nimbly captured the subtleness and myriad nuances of how a woman could gradually be stripped of her identity and self-confidence and allow and even expect mistreatment and subjugation. Evie wasn’t merely trying to understand what went wrong with her previous relationships, she was trying to find who she had been as she had lost herself and no longer trusted her own judgment, and rightly so, she had been decimated. And thanks to Ms. Pearl, my Brit Vocab List now includes stonking – which Mr. Google tells me is something remarkably large or exciting, I like that. In an effort to utilize a fraction of my newly acquired knowledge I will close this review with a small sampling of what I have gleaned from my sloney and swot reading list… Bloody Nora, I’m not telling porkies when I say my personally culled Brit list is mahoosive and stonking.
Author Bio –
Hannah Pearl was born in East London. She is married with two children and now lives in Cambridge.
She has previously worked as a Criminology researcher at a university in Leicester, as a Development Worker with various charities and even pulled a few pints in her time.
In 2015 she was struck down by Labrynthitis, which left her feeling dizzy and virtually housebound. She has since been diagnosed with ME. Reading has allowed Hannah to escape from the reality of feeling ill. She read upwards of three hundred books during the first year of her illness. When her burgeoning ereader addiction grew to be too expensive, she decided to have a go at writing. In 2017 she won Simon and Schuster’s Books and the City #heatseeker short story competition, in partnership with Heat magazine, for her short story The Last Good Day.
Hannah is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association.
Blog – dizzygirlwrites.wordpress.com
Twitter – https://twitter.com/HannahPearl_1
Giveaway
Win 2 x set of floral notebook, pen, book locket necklace and chocolate (Open Internationally)
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