A review by bunceyyy
The Regulars by Georgia Clark

3.0

This is probably nearer to two stars than three, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, so rounded up. Clark kept me reading, but very much in a "oh god this is like watching a car crash, what's going to happen next, I can't look away" type of way... It felt very try-hard, with lots of over-wordy paragraphs and ridiculously over-the-top metaphors that just didn't gel with the more low-brow subject matter. At one point, a guy's (groping) hands are described as "hungry sharks", which speaks for itself really. Whilst I admired parts of the book's plot - and Clark's strong feminist agenda - the overall absurdity of the situation overwhelmed my enjoyment. Yes, this is fiction, so I can pretend that there's a concoction out there that will turn you into a better-looking version of yourself, but Clark's attempts to bring this into line with a modern-day New York city and the three protagonists were jarring at best. Too many things happened that had me thinking "but, really?!" For one thing, the angry electricities man disappears into thin air after being seduced into postponing the electricity cut off for a couple of days. But then the events in the book take place over a period of a couple of weeks, and he - or any consequences of these girls' irresponsible and unbelievable actions - fails to re-appear. For another, one of the main character's is caught in an extremely compromised position that would have most people phoning the police/local asylum...to be forgiven within a few hastily written lines at the beginning of the next chapter, purely (it seems to me) for the sake of plot progression. As the characters chopped and changed between their Pretty and Regular selves, I felt similarly discombobulated as a reader. It is due to this lack of commitment that the message becomes vague and disorientated, and becomes simply "something to do with unrealistic expectations of beauty, self-love, and girl power". It's a shame, because this could have been a clever, succinct, and hilarious book, but it's let down by both trying to be much more than it it is, and its(/Clark's) lack of conviction.