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A review by khieeae
Astrid Inside/Out by Louise McBain
3.0
3.5 stars.
This story follows the interactions of a self conscious blogger after her nose surgery makes her look like her sister. Suddenly everyone is comparing her to her sister, even the hot Italian ex friend from her past.
This book was an okay read, my first by Louise McBain. There was humor and entertainment but I did have a few problems.
None of the characters seemed fully developed to me. Astrid was boring and most of the times, despite this being her book, I was confused on her feelings. I'd expect the constant comparison to her sister and references to her 'new beauty' to have more of a draining affect on her. But the most the author did for that was one or two lines about her not liking it. A deeper look or more emotional statement from Astrid herself may have actually made me care or feel sorry for her. I also didn't really feel the chemistry between her and Simone but I didn't hate them together. The conflict between them was underwhelming. At the end there wasn't really much growth in Astrid, I would have expected her to gain more self love or respect, maybe even stand up to the constant comparisons. As the synopsis says 'its a woman's journey to find her true self on the way to her happily ever after' but I just didn't see that happening.
The writing was nothing special either. This author does have a few books under her belt but they are all very recent so I'm not completely turned off from her books as there's still a lot of time for improvement. Still time for her to 'own' the writing style and make it her b-tch! Also not sure about the medical accuracy, thought nose jobs would've taken longer than two weeks to even go down in swelling. Maybe it was two weeks, either way the book confused me on that one.
Also the Synopsis gives way too much away.
Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for a honest review
This story follows the interactions of a self conscious blogger after her nose surgery makes her look like her sister. Suddenly everyone is comparing her to her sister, even the hot Italian ex friend from her past.
This book was an okay read, my first by Louise McBain. There was humor and entertainment but I did have a few problems.
None of the characters seemed fully developed to me. Astrid was boring and most of the times, despite this being her book, I was confused on her feelings. I'd expect the constant comparison to her sister and references to her 'new beauty' to have more of a draining affect on her. But the most the author did for that was one or two lines about her not liking it. A deeper look or more emotional statement from Astrid herself may have actually made me care or feel sorry for her. I also didn't really feel the chemistry between her and Simone but I didn't hate them together. The conflict between them was underwhelming. At the end there wasn't really much growth in Astrid, I would have expected her to gain more self love or respect, maybe even stand up to the constant comparisons. As the synopsis says 'its a woman's journey to find her true self on the way to her happily ever after' but I just didn't see that happening.
The writing was nothing special either. This author does have a few books under her belt but they are all very recent so I'm not completely turned off from her books as there's still a lot of time for improvement. Still time for her to 'own' the writing style and make it her b-tch! Also not sure about the medical accuracy, thought nose jobs would've taken longer than two weeks to even go down in swelling. Maybe it was two weeks, either way the book confused me on that one.
Also the Synopsis gives way too much away.
Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for a honest review