Author: Holly Waingwright
ISBN: 978-1-76063-348-6
RRP: $29.99
Publication Date: 29 August 2018
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Copy: Courtesy of the Publisher
Holly Wainwright is back with more of the bloggers we learnt to love/hate/laugh at in The Mummy Bloggers.
It sounds like life is a little different for the bloggers now. Elle Campbell has completely reimagined herself as a lifestyle guru in an exclusive retreat that costs women thousands to try out her extreme lifestyle.
Abi Black is planning for the wedding of her dreams to her true love but everything around her is chaos with a teenage daughter trying to find her own online fame and her ex-husband in the shed.
Frances Graham is a new character to the mix, a new mother with an anxiety causing mums group, a colicky newborn and a husband who could be more help. A mum ripe for what the fitmums on Insta and Elle’s retreat are selling.
Wainwright brings her witty social commentary and pulls no punches as she takes us on another rollercoaster ride of bloggers, self-improvement and bad influencers.
I look forward to hearing what our members have to say almost as much as I look forward to jumping back into the world of Elle Campbell and Abi Black myself.
Holly Wainwright can be followed on Facebook.
How To Be Perfect is published by Allen & Unwin and is available now through Angus & Robertson, Booktopia and where all good books are sold.
Thanks to Allen & Unwin 20 of our Beauty and Lace Club members will be reading How To Be Perfect so please be aware there may be spoilers in the comments below.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
Like her last book, The Mummy Bloggers, Holly Wainright’s new book How to be perfect is another delightful, fun, easy read. I finished this book In one sitting one evening!
I enjoyed following Elle and Abi again, and the introduction of the new character Frances made the book more interesting.
How to be perfect was the perfect sequel and I recommend anyone to read it who Wants a funny, quick and witty read, regardless of if you have read the first book or not.
As always, thanks to Beauty and lace for another great read 🙂
I actually really struggled to like this book. Usually I devour anything but I found the whole story just frustrated me. I’m not one for following blogs or any such thing and I think that it all seems so superficial and unrealistic that I don’t know how some people are willing to believe it is all true. I know it was a fictional story and it did explore to a degree how some people are caught in the web of bloggers as such but it really didn’t appeal to me.
“How to Be Perfect” is a fun read – it’s light and funny, but with a serious message underlying it all. It’s not stunningly original, but it’s well written, amusing and an enjoyable read. The characters are vivid and largely believable.
This is the sequel to “The Mummy Bloggers”. You’ll understand the relationships in this book more easily if you’ve read the first, and there are some extra layers to them when you read both books. However, both the relationships and the background are easy to pick up, and the plot is easy to follow too. I don’t think it’s much of a problem if you haven’t read the first.
This is primarily the story of three women – two bloggers and one desperate follower. These women come with partners, ex-husbands, children, step children, sisters, friends – the full panoply of chaos and confusion and delight. It’s everyone’s life, taken up a notch or two. Okay, three notches in some cases.
This is a lot of fun to read, but it also looks seriously at compromise within relationships, parenting, self improvement, and whether we should really believe everything we see online. (Spoiler alert: NO.) It also raises – although doesn’t really explore in any depth – issues around teenagers doing some of their normal exploring on-line, in full view of the world, instead of in private.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and would recommend it to readers who don’t want to work too hard, but do want a little substance to what they’re reading.
I actually struggled to read this book. It might be because I haven’t read the first book. I found the topic quite superficial and the characters unbelievable. I really wanted to like it, perhaps suited to a younger age group than myself!
Thank you Beauty and Lace Club!
I was excited to read this book when it arrived and yet, once I started reading, I wasn’t enjoying it like I thought I would. I even started writing the review in my head, trying to word the criticisms nicely. However, the book slowly but inexorably drew me in. I became entangled with the characters lives and became intrigued with how it would all tie together.
Sometimes the characters annoyed me – the hippies were a bit too cliched and airy fairy, and all the yelling that goes on throughout the book – on a whole though, the characters developed throughout the story and became multi-layered and more relatable.
The book can be read as a stand alone book although I’d recommend reading the first book ‘The Mummy Bloggers’ first. I hadn’t read that book before reading ‘How to be Perfect’, and although the author does a good job bringing you up to speed, I just felt like there were pieces missing.
I did enjoy the story and the way the author addresses some serious, contemporary issues. Holly Wainwright performed a delicate balancing act of keeping the story light hearted and entertaining while delving into deeper issues.
Thanks Allen & Unwin and Beauty & Lace for another great read.
It took me a little while to get into this book. It was such a contrast in style to the book I had just finished that I thought I was not going to enjoy it, and I have not read “The Mummy Bloggers” so I didn’t know the characters. But I very quickly got drawn in, and ended up really enjoying it, and finding it hard to put down. The characters are pretty crazy, yet still believable. I enjoyed how the story jumped between the viewpoints of the different characters. The story itself was a lot of fun, and yet also quite an interesting look at how easily the internet can influence people’s lives, and how people’s lives can appear to be perfect when they are not. It touched on many issues, and one that resonated with me particularly, having recently attended a cybersafety talk at our school, was the ease with which teenagers can be influenced via the internet.
Thank you to Allen & Unwin, and to Beauty and Lace for a great read.
The sequel to “The Mommy Bloggers” is another dark and delightful slice of contemporary fiction.
Elle is back, once again showing women “How To Be Perfect” but like previously, all is not as it seems. Even though she has managed to claw her way back to the top, a lot of what she presents online is carefully curated smoke and mirrors designed to appear perfect. Her detractors are calling b.s. and what will her nemesis, Abi, The Green Diva have to say?
Wainwright once again constructs some fabulous characters: villains scheme while real people struggle.
Frances is a new addition, a newtime Mum and devotee of Elle’s. I’m sure a lot of women would relate to Frances, even in her determined naivety.
This book is a satisfying character study about some different women and the lengths people will go to in order to get ahead. It’s sobering stuff.
I haven’t read the first book in this series, “The Mummy Bloggers” (it’s on by wish list to read) but was excited to be gifted this book by Beauty & Lace and Allen & Unwin.
Overall, I found the book quite enjoyable. It was easy to read and quite humerous & although it can be read as a standalone book,
I think it would have been better to read “The Mummy Bloggers” first because although the author did a good job at filling in the blanks, there were a few small details that were left out, such as what GD actually stood for.
I was also a little thrown by the extremely liberal use of the f bomb through out the dialogue of Abi etc. It actually annoyed me quite a bit – it seemed excessive, over the top & unnecessary, the occassional drop of that bomb would have made the point better.
But otherwise, it was a great read that I actually didn’t want to put down!
An interesting insight into social media culture and the perceptions of perfection that are shown online. But I really struggled with this one. I love a chick lit novel and normally devour them. I just found the characters superficial and shallow. I had absolutely no empathy or connection to them at all.
Thank you to Allen and Unwin and Beauty and Lace for this copy.
This is the 2nd Holly Wainwright novel I have read and it continues on from the first but is an enjoyable light hearted read all in itself.