Thursday 9 February 2012

Review - More Like Her by Liza Palmer

Really enjoyable read by an author that certainly knows how to surprise her readers!
Frannie is a speech and language therapist in a school.  She sees herself as the girl that is always left on the shelf.  Parting from boyfriend and fellow teacher Ryan, who had been seeing someone else, had left her feeling useless, sad and wondering what on earth life holds for her.   She feels that her whole life is spent being the person that people want her to be rather than who she wants to be for herself. 
When she meets her new Head Teacher Emma, she wishes she was more like her.  On the surface, Emma seems to have the perfect life, she is confident and assertive, with a great job, fab lifestyle, happy marriage, wonderful house and to top it all even a gorgeous dog. 
But appearances can be deceptive as this book shows in a mindblowing event.  Frannie and her fellow teachers find out the hard way that Emma’s life isn’t what it seems!
Difficult to say any more about the plot as it would be a real spoiler but OMG – what a surprise I had!  I even went to work the next day telling everyone about the shock I had in this book. 
It was highly emotional, disturbing and sad in certain moments, yet romantic at the same time.  I really enjoyed reading it very much and seeing how Frannie reacted to the events in her life and the new people that she meets.  It shows how when she thinks she’s a weak and defenceless person, she’s actually a very strong, courageous and lovely girl and how it just goes to show that people's perceptions can be very different to reality. 
I loved the relationship between Frannie and her close friends, they talk to each other the way that real friends do with love, sarcasm and humour.  I liked the colourful way that Liza painted the scenes in the book making them come alive easily.  I looked forward to how the confusing relationship between Frannie and Sam developed, they both pussyfooted around each other, not quite knowing whether the other wanted more from the friendship. 
Really enjoyed reading this book, it was extremely entertaining, enlightening and interesting.
Liza Palmer lives in Pasadena, with her dog, Poet.  She has written two plays that were performed in Los Angeles and is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts – West.  She is the author of Conversations with the Fat Girl which became an international bestseller in its first week of publication.  Her second novel was Seeing Me Naked and her third A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents was released in January 2010 and all three of these novels sound like fantastic reads.   Liza is hard at work currently working on her next novel as well as writing for VH1 Classic Show Pop Up Video. 
Liza’s website can be found here. 

1 comment:

Alicia said...

I was really surprised by this book! It was not as fluffy as I had originally anticipated, and when the big event happened (I don't know what else to call it), I was so shocked! Great book :)