The Stylist, Rosie Nixon

 

Genre:   women’s fiction

Some years before the film I found the book The Devil wears Prada….it was a fun read but with a serious side hidden among the humour. this book reminds me of that, the way it details the silliness of life in Celeb World, where a fashion faux pas could be a simple as the wrong shade of nail polish, and the wrong outfit is a fate worse than death. In fact this is epitomised in the hotel fire alarm scenario and I could envisage that little snippet as being very true of certain people.

I liked Amber, she’s like lots of girls, hard working and lives life to the full, and hoping for a good career in her chosen area. Currently she’s working in a fashion store, when due to a window dressing malfunction which is taken for real, she gets a temporary job with a top Stylist helping as her assistant for the awards season….Mona is a real enigma, crazy in the extreme, she’s a steamroller, a force of nature, she barely pauses for breath and before she knows what’s happened Amber is out in LA.
Its mayhem from the moment Amber steps (hung-over after celebrating with her flatmate the night before) on the plane. Its a steep learning curve for her, and the first thing she learns is Mona is chaos personified, she doesn’t seem to have any kind of system, she takes on far more than she can control, and Amber gets left in the lurch to sort disasters again and again. Along the way she somehow manages to get persuaded to pose as someone else for celeb Belle Beau when she needs backup for her story to her fiancé…that lie leads to more and more. From a love live that seems to have died in the water she goes on to meet rising star Liam, who seems to be interested in her if the flurry of texts are anything to judge, and gorgeous Rob, whose producing a TV show pilot staring Mona and her life, who becomes very friendly with her. Mona only wants them filming the good parts but they seem to be around for much of the chaos that seems to permanently surround her.

So its a barely time to breath, comedic romp, through a stylists job with the stars…and the would-be stars. Dresses, bags, accessories from broad, beautiful bangles “they’re called Cuffs darling…” and brilliant, burnished barrettes to devastating, dripping diamonds that have to have their own security guard. Amber finds herself thinking and scheming on the spur of the moment, dropped by Mona in some real knife edge scenes. It might be just a dress to you and me, but to the stars, designers and stylists its career making and breaking, and the press are there to catch every potential disaster – they want dirt not just pretty pictures and they’ll do their utmost to find it.
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Stars: Four, its a fun read, sharp and sparky at times and full of fun at the sheer ridiculousness of some situations.

ARC supplied by Netgalley and publishers