Morning Everyone,

Happy Thursday! My favourite day of the week as I have no doubt said before, because I say it all of the time and I’m annoying like that. I’m having quite a good week so far. Work has ticked over nicely, it’s been quiet around the house and I’ve got some good reading time in. All in all, I am a happy girl.

Book 📖

Thank you to @mantlepressbooks and @jonadin for this copy of The Double Life of Daisy Hemmings in return for an honest review. The Double Life of Daisy Hemmings was published on 7th July 2022 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

It’s 1988 in Cornwall when twins Daisy and Bea Hemmings take a group of friends away to their house for a holiday. They’re a glamorous bunch and their arrival is very much noticed by local teen Jason. It’s them that make him realise that he wants more from life than his Dad’s pub. Daisy specifically entrances him as she does most people around her. However the Daisy obsession mixed with teenage indulgences are a recipe for disaster and by the end of the summer, one of the group will be dead.

Fast forward to 2018 and Daisy Hemmings has had a successful career as an actress and decides it’s time to write her autobiography. She hires James Tate to ghost write it for her. He’s experienced and very good at his job. Mostly because he has a lot of practise of stepping into someones shoes and pretending to be them. He’s spend most of his life pretending to be someone else. But what will happen when his real self and his pretend self collide?

General Thoughts 🤔

This was one of those books that tends to baffle me. Not a lot really happened, but I was still interested and still wanted to read. I’m not sure if the twists were supposed to be surprises, or if I was supposed to have predicted them (which I did) but I strangely wasn’t mad at it either way. I knew what was coming, but I still wanted to watch it all unfold and play out in front of me.

Characters 👫👭👬

Though I may not have been able to relate to the characters in this book, they definitely felt real. I didn’t think that any of them were particularly likeable and all of them were flawed, but they were genuine.

I found Bea to be the most interesting character of them all as well as the most troubled. I couldn’t work out whether she remained within the circle of friends because she wanted to or because she had no other option. James was the character that annoyed me the most. What started off as him finding himself in a coincidental situation, ended up with him turning a bit creepy, obsessive and delusional.

Writing Style ✍️

My favourite thing about this book was the feeling and atmosphere that the writing created; specifically during the 1988 chapters. It felt so real to me and though I was just a small baby then, I could perfectly imagine the setting and characters and outfits and everything. This doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the 2018 chapters. I liked the way that the author created this entitled group of teenagers who remained an entitled bunch of teenagers (in adult disguise) twenty years later.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

I whizzed through this book pretty quickly and I think it was mostly because the characters were engaging although sometimes annoying. I really enjoyed the UK in the 80s vibe to the story which I think gave it a nice little edge. A relatively easy going read that I’d recommend for some chilled reading.

😍😍😍😩😩