HI, I'm Steph, 20 from Warrington! I also write on the review site DooYoo under the same name :) Th...
HI, I'm Steph, 20 from Warrington! I also write on the review site DooYoo under the same name :) Thanks to everyone who rates me, especially the E's! I am very grateful for all rates! :o)
Member since:30.05.2009
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Wendy Holden: Beautiful People
I bought this book from Sainsbury's a couple of weeks ago, it was two books for £7, which is good value as I bought this book whose RRP is £6.99, and Jane Green's The Beach House, which has the same RRP.
Beautiful People is 695 pages long, with 58 chapters, so it's quite a long book and if your not used to reading books and if you don't have much time to read, then don't bother with this book, as it's double the size of a normal novel and if it takes you a long time to read a normal book, then you could find your forgetting what happened at the beginning of the book when your getting towards the end!
It is good value for money though, even at full RRP price, it's a good price for a book of this size, and alot of books of this size would cost alot more than £7. It is paperback, and the front cover is a cream colour, with a picture of a womans legs in red high heel shoes in a gold dress walking along. With the author name and the book name. A simple book cover, which gives nothing away.
Plot:
The story revolves around a lot of main characters which can make it a little confusing at the start, but as the characters start coming together it gets much
easier to read. First of all there is Sam, she is the head of modelling agency Wild, and always on the look out for new faces, her clients have to be skinny (size zero is her goal with all her models!) and they must have a pretty face, infact a perfect face. Anything less than perfect just isn't good enough. Orlando is a normal teenage boy, he is beautiful but likes to hide it. His mother Georgie is a pushy mum who wants her son to strive and get the "best contacts" he can. Whilst his father Richard is a laid back MP who doesn't care about "contacts" and cares more about doing his job properly. But then are their "friends" Hugh and Laura Faugh and their delightful twin sons who like to rub their swindling lives in the Fitzmaurices faces. Belle Murphy is a film star in Hollywood, but he is washed up and a has been, and she is falling from the hit list quicker than a ten tonne weight from a sky scraper.That is until she goes to London and adopts an African child Madonna style, and gets a part in a Shakespear play to make the public love her again. Whilst in London she meets Niall, an up and coming, or no so up and coming actually actor, who likes the prospects been with Belle could make for him, but what about his gilfriend Darcy Price... Darcy is an actress, but unlike most she doesn't want the fame and fortune and does her job for the love of it and not because she wants to be recognised in the street, but when she gets the call from Mitch her agent in LA (and coincidentally Belle Murphys agent too) to tell her she has a leading part in the new Galaxia film, the best sci fi since Star Wars, although she is reluctant, she takes the job and heads off to Hollywood to be interviewed by the director. Next off is Christian Harlow, an up his own backside actor, Belle Murpheys ex (he cast her aside when she got unfamous!), and top notch prat. He wants to be where the money is, and if that means casting off his women when the limelight fades, he sure will. Finally in the HUGE cast list of characters in this book, is Emma. She is a nanny from Leeds, who has moved to London to get a better job. Becoming Nanny for a rich family, who have no idea how to care for their children Cosmo and Hero, she loves it, and loves the children more than anything, but when drugs are planted in her bedroom, she is fired from her job, and ends up stuck as a nanny to Belle Murphy's adopted (and forgotten!) new born Morning.
When all of the characters meet up in Italy through a mix of events, and meet celebrity chef Marco in turn, everything gets switched around, and everything comes out in the open.
My Opinion:
The book has too many charcters to make it easy to get into. When I first started reading the book I very nearly put it back and stopped reading it, it flits between characters in the begininning and although you don't get confused by who's who, the characters aren't made interesting enough to make you want to keep reading.
As I got towards the end of the book around chapter 40, when everyone comes together in the story, it does get more interesting, and becomes a little more exciting. But I certainly wouldn't say this is the kind of book which you can't put down. It seems that as the book is so thick, Wendy Holden get's a little too into detail with the people, and you tend to be told silly things which you don't really need to know, which have no relevance to the story, but also aren't interesting either, and I found myself skim reading a few pages in each chapter as what I was been told was boring me, 4 pages on how someones dad would used to sing nursery rhymes at night is just not necessary.
As I said when you get through the end part of the book, the story does get more interesting, and speeds up in the way it is told, rather than stopping and describing every single detail which is just irrelevant to anything which is happening, the story progresses as it should do, and it gets more "un-put-downable".
If you have time to pick up and put down as you please and don't mind a book where you don't have much enthusiasm to pick it up for hours on end, then this book is great for you. It's not a bad book, the story is a good one, and the characters are believeable and likeable or hugely dislikeable where applicable. So my only qualm with the book is the length, but not so much the length but the amount of irrelevant information we're given.
In conclusion, the book is good for people who read very quickly, and find it easy to get into a book with alot of characters. I would say to give this ago if you enjoy reading long books, and don't get confised easily! The storyline is good, but beware there is a lot of going on and on and on about things!
Summary: A good book but it could be much shorter without the irrelevant details!
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