Ali Harris

I've given this book 2 stars on the basis that I loved the setting for this story. Hardy's sounds like somewhere I would go. It reminds me of my favourite department store from when I was in single figures.

I didn't really like the rest of the book, however. Now, because I don't tend to read much chick-lit because every book I've read of this genre is pretty much the same, I've kept this out of my review because that isn't the fault of the book.

The main issue with this book, for me, was the protagonist, Evie. I went off her in the opening chapters when she revealed herself as totally selfish, in that she stole somebody's job. As I read I imagined a parallel story of a poor girl who turned up for her first day at work only to be turned away because the job had already been taken. It that happened to me I wouldn't have just gone home, I would have fought for my job. Gaping plot hole? From that point on I knew this story would be far-fetched and that Evie and I would never get on.

So she's in a stolen job for two years and is perfectly happy for nobody to respect her, or even know her name. The person before her was well known, so it wasn't a general lack of respect for the person running the stockroom. We have an invisible character, who spends lots of time moaning and winging about being invisible, but not doing anything about it. So she deceives the people she works with by going under someone else's name, deceives the man she starts dating by assuming someone else's personality ... this is not a person I would want to associate with.

The other staff at Hardy's were an interesting bunch of people, highly sterotypical and bordering on cringeworthy. I liked Lily, she brought the sparkle to the story. The foreign cleaning team irritated me no end and I found the way they were portrayed quite insulting. Carly had no sense whatsoever, and clearly didn't respect Evie, but Evie saw her as a good friend for some unfathomable reason. Felix and Sam were nice. Delilah used Evie, which was also ok. I didn't like Joel. Another cringeworthy moment: when he was trying to win Evie back and told her she reminded him of his ex-girlfriend. Good grief ...

The idea of the secret makeovers (more anonymity) was fun, although it got highly repetitive in the story. The imagery was good. I was grateful that the book wasn't written on the assumption that every reader knows London intimately, so that was a plus-point.

The writing style was ok, it worked with the story, although the book was terribly overlong. If all the descriptions of every single thing every single character was wearing were omitted, the book would be quie skinny. There were also some hideous typos /grammatical errors in the book (not the fault of the author).

To end, I wouldn't recommend this book. It just didn't work for me.… (mere)

Cosy reading but I am not sure if I really liked the main charakter - Evie. Seems to me as if the author tried too much - it would have been ok - in my opinion - just writing a magic christmas novel, with love, friendship and daily struggles, but obiously she wanted to be more and added kind of psychological touch and "wordly wisdom" that made the book for me quite ambiguos, sometimes unfocused and just not that perfect reading as it could have been. But sure readers should give it a chance and make their own decision about it.… (mere)

It was a cute storyline and there were aspects that I enjoyed, but I didn't get that into the story.

Evie works in the stockroom of a legendary department store. It's been around over a hundred years and is very beloved. But no one shops there much any more, the store feels stale. Evie finds out that the store will be sold unless it makes a huge turn around in profits in the next few weeks.

Evie decides to make it her mission to save the story. It means a lot to her personally.
I enjoyed the parts of the store detailing the changes she made to the departments.

She wants to help the store but she also feels invisible. Most of people at work think he her name is Sarah.
Then she meets a very charming, handsome man...who thinks her name is Carly.
She doesn't correct any of them.

I guess that's the part of the story that didn't work for me. I know Evie had really low self esteem, but for all the time she spends feeling invisible, she is atleast somewhat responsible for that because she never even clarifies that no one seems to know her name.… (mere)