Azur Like It

Rating:
Summary: "Azur" don't like it
Review: A quirky English reporter at the Cannes Film Festival -- the makings of a fun novel, right? Wrong. Wendy Holden misfires badly in "Azur Like It," a tepid Brit-chick-lit nove. Saddled with an offensively dumb heroine and a boring plot, it has only a few moments of over-the-top color.

Kate Clegg toils at her thankless job at the Slackmucklewaite Mercury (known as the "Mockery") in a small North-English town. She yearns to escape to a real journalism job, but has to be content with small-town stuff for the time being. Things go downhill when megamogul Peter Hardstone buys the Mockery and wrecks what little worth it had. Gone are Kate's dreams of covering the Cannes Film Festival -- all she gets to do is interview witchy reality-TV starlet Champagne D'Vyne.

That all changes when Kate encounters Nat Hardstone, the hunky son of her boss. Kate is swept off her feet by the sexy Nat's advances, and most of all by his willingness to get her sent to the Cannes Film Festival. She doesn't notice his shady, manipulative behavior, and ends up in France by herself, abandoned and friendless. But with some friends to help out, she might just salvage her trip...

"Azur Like It" is strictly by the numbers chick lit, with a slightly different setting. But a boring plot set in southern France is still boring. Holden tries to spice it all up to make it fun and delicious, but without a solid plotline or much of an idea where it's all going.

Holden manages some uproarious kitsch moments, like the description of the Hardstone mansion's "Baroque'n'Roll" interior decoration. But those are offset by the boring, like much of Kate's horrible first days in France. Not to mention the embarrassing: It's hard not to wince when we're treated to a cringeworthy sex scene in a restaurant, involving Nat's big toe.

What's more, "Azur Like It" is hideously predictable. It's obvious early on just what a creep Nat is, and that Kate will end up in more trouble if she goes along with him. And her constant parade of misery -- getting her jacket burned off right before the festival -- gets tired after a while.

Kate is so blindingly naive and trusting that you may want to club her. Her Goth-y pal Darren is far more likable, and the caricatures -- the flamboyant decorator, the snotty trophy wife -- are the most fun, even if they rarely are more than cardboard cutouts. The most entertaining is certainly Champagne, a horrendously rude, untalented starlet who aspires to be the next Bond girl.

Take your average chick-lit book, cut out the plot, add kitsch and an exotic setting, and you have "Azur Like It." It's pretty at the start, but degenerates into a mass of cliches and purple ceilings.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't pick it up
Review: A quirky English reporter at the Cannes Film Festival -- the makings of a fun novel, right? Wrong. Wendy Holden misfires badly in "Azur Like It," a tepid Brit-chick-lit nove. Saddled with an offensively dumb heroine and a boring plot, it has only a few moments of over-the-top color.

Kate Clegg toils at her thankless job at the Slackmucklewaite Mercury (known as the "Mockery") in a small North-English town. She yearns to escape to a real journalism job, but has to be content with small-town stuff for the time being. Things go downhill when megamogul Peter Hardstone buys the Mockery and wrecks what little worth it had. Gone are Kate's dreams of covering the Cannes Film Festival -- all she gets to do is interview witchy reality-TV starlet Champagne D'Vyne.

That all changes when Kate encounters Nat Hardstone, the hunky son of her boss. Kate is swept off her feet by the sexy Nat's advances, and most of all by his willingness to get her sent to the Cannes Film Festival. She doesn't notice his shady, manipulative behavior, and ends up in France by herself, abandoned and friendless. But with some friends to help out, she might just salvage her trip...

"Azur Like It" is strictly by the numbers chick lit, with a slightly different setting. But a boring plot set in southern France is still boring. Holden tries to spice it all up to make it fun and delicious, but without a solid plotline or much of an idea where it's all going.

Holden manages some uproarious kitsch moments, like the description of the Hardstone mansion's "Baroque'n'Roll" interior decoration. But those are offset by the boring, like much of Kate's horrible first days in France. Not to mention the embarrassing: It's hard not to wince when we're treated to a cringeworthy sex scene in a restaurant, involving Nat's big toe.

What's more, "Azur Like It" is hideously predictable. It's obvious early on just what a creep Nat is, and that Kate will end up in more trouble if she goes along with him. And her constant parade of misery -- getting her jacket burned off right before the festival -- gets tired after a while.

Kate is so blindingly naive and trusting that you may want to club her. Her Goth-y pal Darren is far more likable, and the caricatures -- the flamboyant decorator, the snotty trophy wife -- are the most fun, even if they rarely are more than cardboard cutouts. The most entertaining is certainly Champagne, a horrendously rude, untalented starlet who aspires to be the next Bond girl.

Take your average chick-lit book, cut out the plot, add kitsch and an exotic setting, and you have "Azur Like It." It's pretty at the start, but degenerates into a mass of cliches and purple ceilings.

Rating:
Summary: Her Best So Far
Review: Azur Like It is the story of a lost girl, Kate, from a small Northern English town who isn't happy with much of anything. She writes for a local newspaper and lives at home with her hard father, caring mother and knitting crazed grandmother. She can only think about going to France to report on the film festival and a romance novel that she is writing.

She makes it to France and this is when her whole life turns upside down. Her love turns, her life turns and her friends turn. She is pushed to move on her own two feet and grow as a person. You see the character changing in a magnificent and realistic way.

The story takes an adventures change and becomes more of a mystery that has you rooting for Kate and her friends. This is a wonderful story that I would highly recommend!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: I am a big Wendy Holden fan. All of her novels, especially Simply Divine and Gossip Hound, entertained me from beginning to end. However, Azur Like It, her new novel, is a big disappointment. This novel contains the same tale of a simple but ambitious young woman dreaming of having a glamorous job in which she mingles with the most fashionable socialites. It also contains satirical language with some fun puns. The main problem with Azur Like It is that it isn't quite as funny or as clever as her previous novels. This one bored me to tears and I couldn't wait to finish it! If Ms. Holden isn't able to bring something new to her formula, then her novels will continue to go downhill. I am still a big of this author -- I just hope that her next project is in the same vein as Gossip Hound.

Rating:
Summary: Did Wendy Holden really write this?
Review: I'm a huge Wendy Holden fan. If you are a new reader, don't give up hope, her other books send you on a rollercoaster of emotions, with unique characters you will not forget.

But as for Azure Like It, all I can say is NO!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't pick it up
Review: Normally I'm the first one to buy a Wendy Holden book, and usually I can't put the book down. In this case, I just couldn't pick it up. After having read 4 fantastic books in a row, I was saving the best for last. Imagine my disappointment when I couldn't even get past the first chapter without yawning, and several months later, after re-reading that first chapter on subsequent attempts, am yet to get through to chapter two.

I'm sorry to say that if a book can't grip you in the first few pages, or at least chapter one, it's pretty difficult to motivate onself to continue. I just hope your next book is a saving grace, as I'm still an ardent fan and will always cherish the past glee your books have provided. I look forward to the next one...

Rating:
Summary: You'll have lots of fun reading this entertaining novel!
Review: Wendy Holden has great fun with British brand and place names: the country village in FARM FATALE was called Eight Mile Bottom, the publishing firm in GOSSIP HOUND Hatto & Hatto (v. Chatto & Windus), and now, in AZUR LIKE IT, the grotty burg of Slackmucklethwaite, to which hapless heroine and budding journalist Kate Clegg has been consigned since birth.

Holden's place names are over the top, and so are most of the characters in this farcical picaresque tale of a girl, her ambitions, and the comic winds that blow her across the Channel and into the midst of the glitterati making their yearly pilgrimage to the Cannes Film Festival. Almost everything that happens is completely unlikely, from Kate's tryst with young-roué-down-from-university Nat Hardstone in his recently and cheesily redecorated room (his outlandish stepmother has hired a decorator du jour who disguises lack of expertise with yardage and drapery pins) to her being hired in a small French town by a fabulously rich elderly widow with a mansion stuffed with priceless works of art.

About the only thing that rings true in Kate's life is her home life, where her salt-of-the-Midlands parents and grandmother offer lots of tea, toast and a hefty dose of reality (not to mention many oddly knitted garments from Gran). Having overdosed on pots of Typhoo and slices of cake, the somewhat plump Kate sublimates her romantic notions in a perfectly dreadful manuscript (Northern Gigolo) that she keeps tucked beneath her mattress.

After Nate seduces Kate for the slimy purpose of getting her to purchase airplane tickets to Cannes for the two of them, she thinks she's finally off to Cannes to cover the film festival for the Slackmucklethwaite Mercury (which locals dub "The Mockery"). Given the pickle Kate finds herself in, with no press credentials worth a franc and no francs to spare, it's no wonder Holden allows her latest working-girl protagonist to fly off and experience a fairy tale.

As Kate gradually gets her "sea legs" by the seashore, she finds out that small towns work pretty much the same way no matter what language is being spoken, and she learns that she's nowhere near as dependent on hearth and home as she had believed for her twentysomething years. She also uncovers a real-estate scandal connected not only to dear old Slackmucklethwaite, but also to Holden's dear old stock character, professional celebrity Champagne D'Vyne. Not one of the plot twists seems probable, but that's hardly the point.

Reading a Wendy Holden novel is much like entering what the English call a "Wendy house" (after the tiny shack the lost boys construct in Peter Pan): the proportions are completely wrong for ordinary life, but they all work together in their own eccentric way. Holden has so much fun with her silly place names, puns, and witty dialogue that it scarcely matters whether or not Kate has grown as a character --- because the reader is having lots of fun, too.

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick

Rating:
Summary: Ugh
Review: What a stupid main character. She's convinced she knows all while outwardly displaying really obnoxious low self-esteem. The story is standard and dull, the humor that I found in earlier Holden books is pretty much absent, and I eventually had to give up and stop reading. I don't know, perhaps the book redeems itself in the last third, but honestly, I stopped caring. The part that really disgusted me was when the main character completely disregards any idea that things are not always what she's sure they are, and ignores the likeliest of possible scenarios in favor of considering herself superior. I won't go into detail so as not to spoil anyone, but if you want to know what I mean, email me.
But sheesh, what a dope.