Girl in a Spin

Author: Clodagh Murphy

Jenny Hannigan seems like she has it all: she’s a platinum blonde, totally stunning party girl with a legion of devoted ex-boyfriends who all still adore her, and she’s just fallen in love with Britain’s next Prime Minister, Richard Allam!

However, all Jenny secretly wants is a life of domestic bliss to make up for her unhappy childhood. She thinks that she can have all this and more with Richard.

Except Jenny isn’t what you would call ‘PM-wife material’. So Richard asks top publicist, the very good-looking Dev Tennant, to spin Jenny to the Party and to the public.  But Jenny is a girl with more than one skeleton in her closet, and as Election Day comes closer Jenny’s life starts spinning out of control, and all of a sudden she isn’t sure what she wants from life anymore…

Clodagh Murphy’s Girl in a Spin is a heart-warming romantic comedy, perfect for fans of Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes (like me!).

Girl in a Spin is hilarious! I haven’t been reading many comedic books lately, so it was refreshing to read something as light and funny as this. I loved Jenny’s string of unrequited ex’s who have set up an online support group to encourage themselves to move on, and for support if any of them feel the urge to stalk! Jenny’s innocent and rather capricious personality makes for some unexpected, extremely funny moments throughout the novel.

Jenny pretty much made this book for me! All though at first it doesn’t seem like it, she’s far from perfect – but that just makes her all the more likable, and relatable. As the book goes on, we start to delve into her somewhat scandalous past, and she starts to seem a bit more like ‘one of us’ than your average fiction heroine. Her mix of innocence and street smarts is completely captivating. I found myself wishing that everything would work out alright for her, and cheering her on at times when it didn’t. Although Jenny is fairly ditsy, this only served to encourage the reader to feel for her. I found myself wishing that I could give her advice when I knew that she was making the wrong choices, and it made me want to skip ahead in the book, just to find out what would happen next!

One of the things that I liked best about Girl in a Spin is the romance that develops between Dev and Jenny. Though the novel is a little bit predictable in this aspect, (You can pretty much tell that Dev and Jenny are going to fall in love from reading the blurb) the way that they fall in love is gorgeous; Dev is so sweet and caring. It makes you want to fall in love, just to experience what they are feeling!

Don’t be fooled by its less-than-amazing cover; Girl in a Spin is utterly delightful. Poignant and at times laugh out loud funny, it uses comedy to deal with serious issues in a way that is still light enough for a chick lit book. A completely enjoyable journey through the world of political spin seen in the eyes of Jenny, it’s the perfect book to curl up on the couch with it on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

It’s also a whole lot more exciting than the Australian Federal Election has been!

mandy