New York Valentine by Carmen Reid Corgi Books HK$91
The writer of the Secrets at St Jude's books for teens, Scottish-based Carmen Reid is now hailed a best-selling author with more books on the way. This book - the latest in her Personal Shopper series starring Annie Valentine - is aimed at the adult chick-lit market. It would be far more appropriate for teenage girls with a fashion fetish.
Annie Valentine is a 30-something mother of one-year-old twins, cruelly called Minnie and Mickey, and a teenage daughter and son from a previous marriage. She is also on TV as a kind of 'what-not-to-wear' presenter, but the show is axed and Annie finds herself out of work, slightly overweight and with a mighty credit card debt.
Her music teacher husband is, of course, patient, kind, loving and understanding, but Annie needs to do something to get back in the career saddle or lose her ability to shop, shop and shop some more.
Enter her good friend Svetlana, a Ukrainian woman with a string of rich ex-husbands. Svetlana's daughter in New York is struggling with her fashion business and needs a savvy adviser, which is where Annie and her school-leaver teenage daughter Lana come in.
Off to New York they go, where Annie's descriptions of the city are juvenile to the point of hilarity: 'It was wide, wide, wide' is her not-so-vivid description of Fifth Avenue.
