Perfect Skin - Nick Earls
I really enjoyed reading this for a few reasons. Firstly, Nick Earls is an Australian author and the book was set in the outer suburbs of Brisbane. It was a nice change to the standard American or Irish/London setting of many of the upper end of the chick lit range. I really enjoyed the central character - a single dad (Jon) who is dealing with a 6 month old daughter. Earls managed to get just the right blend of caring confusion in this character. There are lots of light-hearted moments (some truly hilarious adventures with a cat belonging to a slightly over-eager would be romantic interest. The humour helps to balance out some of the more serious themes such as Jon's struggles to come to terms with being a single parent, the loss of his wife and the problems with their relationship leading up to her death. I laughed out loud at some of the situations and observations and could really understand some of the doubts he expressed about whether he was up to the challenge of parenting. My only criticism is that there was no punctuation for speech (no speech marks), which made it very confusing at times trying to work out whether he was speaking out loud or simply thinking to himself. As Jon was quite a reflective character, at times he was having a conversation AND monitoring what he was saying and doing mentally at the same time. There were several times when I had to return to the beginning of a page to try to work out what was going on, which was a bit frustrating. (Why do authors do this? Tim Winton did it in Dirt Music as well and it drove me crazy there to. ) All in all, this was a great chick-lit option and I will be looking for more of his books.
I really enjoyed reading this for a few reasons. Firstly, Nick Earls is an Australian author and the book was set in the outer suburbs of Brisbane. It was a nice change to the standard American or Irish/London setting of many of the upper end of the chick lit range. I really enjoyed the central character - a single dad (Jon) who is dealing with a 6 month old daughter. Earls managed to get just the right blend of caring confusion in this character. There are lots of light-hearted moments (some truly hilarious adventures with a cat belonging to a slightly over-eager would be romantic interest. The humour helps to balance out some of the more serious themes such as Jon's struggles to come to terms with being a single parent, the loss of his wife and the problems with their relationship leading up to her death. I laughed out loud at some of the situations and observations and could really understand some of the doubts he expressed about whether he was up to the challenge of parenting. My only criticism is that there was no punctuation for speech (no speech marks), which made it very confusing at times trying to work out whether he was speaking out loud or simply thinking to himself. As Jon was quite a reflective character, at times he was having a conversation AND monitoring what he was saying and doing mentally at the same time. There were several times when I had to return to the beginning of a page to try to work out what was going on, which was a bit frustrating. (Why do authors do this? Tim Winton did it in Dirt Music as well and it drove me crazy there to. ) All in all, this was a great chick-lit option and I will be looking for more of his books.