Gemma Burgess

More chick-lit than romance but I don't want to make a new shelf. The protagonist was kind of annoying but also occasionally a little funny. I probably couldn't tell you what this was about if you asked me in a month. Probably the most memorable thing is that it needed a lot of editing. Tons of misspelled words, what appeared to be missing text, and at one point, calling a character by the wrong name. There were several points where there were empty quotation marks. Like so:

"Blah, blah, blah," Sophie said.
".", I replied.

At first, I though it was style affectation, like a verbal shrug (or something) but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. If I had paid money for it, I probably would be way more pissed but I borrowed it for my January Amazon Prime pick.… (plus d'informations)

I have been missing old-school Jane Green, Sophie Kinsella, and others who used to write what I considered some of the best British chick-lit. I love chick-lit novels but they have seemed to fall out of favor over the past couple of years. More and more we have writers either for straight romance or it becomes a women's fiction book.

I really love the tale of one woman taking a detox from dating after having six disastrous break-ups in a row. The main character, Sass, still recovering over her fifth break-up that temporarily scrambled her brains and then dealing with her sixth boyfriend dumping her too has made her call a time-out from dating for at least three months. I could definitely feel the main character as I was reading this since heaven knows I and millions of other women would probably do very well with declaring a dating detox ourselves.

Taking place in London and New York we have Sass trying to be assertive at work as well as in her personal life. With three best friends (Kate, Bloomie,and Mitch) there are several laugh out loud moments that I really enjoyed (I loved the idea of every Mitch party involving a signature drink with blenders).

Having Sass provide readers with details about what went wrong with each guy who has broken up with her and having all of these same guys pop up throughout the entire novel I thought was really good.… (plus d'informations)

I finished reading Gemma Burgess's "The Dating Detox" and promptly bought the next book in her 'London Girls' series. This novel and "The Dating Detox" could be read as standalone novels.

In "A Girl Like You" we have Abigail dealing with being single for the first time in years. Abigail broke up with her long-time boyfriend and quickly moved in with Robert (best friend of her sister's fiancee). With Robert's expertise on how to be single and enjoy it Abigail starts to date and eventually even begins to relish her singleness until she meets "the one."

I really did love the character of Abigail in this novel. To me she was a delightful mess. I can only imagine how weird it would feel to go from a long-term relationship to being single in London. Ms. Burgess is able to delightfully capture all of the characters like Abigail, Robert, Abigail's sister and close friends.

However, I could only give this novel two stars. This was due to a lot of errors I found in this novel and a plot shift that changed the dynamic of the first half of the novel. With regards to the errors I found, several times I would just find a character speaking and all I would see is "," or a character would be "kissging". I don't know if this was because of my Kindle version or not but thought I would let other customers know that it was in my version of this book.

Second, the plot shift was a major issue for me. We have Abigail being happy to be single and free and when the plot shifts she becomes an entirely different character. I struggled to finish the novel once this happened. When the plot re-shifted again I was pretty fed up with Abigail. At this point I was all out of sympathy for the character and was happy when the novel came to a close. I really did love "The Dating Detox" but just did not care for "A Girl Like You" at all.… (plus d'informations)