The Pollyanna Plan

by Talli Roland

[Leah]

Talli Roland is one of the Chick Lit authors whose books I most look forward to. She’s incredibly prolofic meaning that three times a year we get to experience a new Roland novel. (Although one of them is a novella, but still!) She covers everything – Christmas novellas, a book series, first-person novels, third-person novels; she can write anything. She could write a book about paint (an apt metaphor considering a lot of The Pollyanna Plan is about painting) and it would be interesting. She always manages to write a book I enjoy, and I love her for it, and long may it continue.

The Pollyanna Plan is Roland’s fifth novel believe it or not and she’s also the author of two fabulous novellas. The Pollyanna Plan lets us into the life of Emma Beckett, and what a life it is. She loves her job as an under-writer, she has a boyfriend, George, and she firmly believes that her life couldn’t be better. For someone like her, a realist, there is nothing that can get her down, because she always expects the worst. So when she loses her job and her boyfriend all in one fell swoop, Emma finds herself out of her comfort zone for the first time in her life. When her friend Alice suggests that perhaps now is the time for change, now is the time to be more positive, Emma adopts The Pollyanna Plan, where thinking positive is the way forward, and there’s no room to be realistic about things. But can you live your whole life simply by thinking positive, especially when Emma’s spent her whole life thinking otherwise?

I very much enjoyed reading The Pollyanna Plan. I thought it was a very quick and easy read, but one that also had a message. It’s very much a Chick Lit novel, but Roland has given it a bit of a darker edge, especially where Will, the guy Emma meets when she goes to his DIY shop to buy some paint, is concerned. I loved that Emma was willing to change her life just with one small fix, especially since it challenged Emma’s very essence and was a very un-Emma like thing to do. It was an easy book for me to relate to because I myself am very Pollyanna like. It’s not that I always see the positive in things, but I try to, and yes is probably my favourite word ever. Emma was a great character, Will too, and I found both of them very warm and relateable.

The Pollyanna Plan probably wasn’t my favourite Talli Roland book (that honour goes to Build A Man), but I would still recommend it and I very much enjoyed it. I thought the plot was excellent, and Roland always comes up with excellent plots, ones other authors haven’t thought of. I can’t wait for her next novel – that’s the thing with Roland’s novels, as soon as you finish the latest one, you can’t wait for the next one, and as such I can’t wait for the final (I think?) Serenity Holland book which is out next year. I enjoyed the fact that Will wasn’t the perfect hero in a novel, I loved that he struggled with an illness yet he still came across as a lovely man that I wanted to read more from. Emma, too, was a great character, if a little cold at points (though thankfully not too often) and I adored Emma’s best friend Alice, who really made the book pulse. The Pollyanna Plan is a great read, and one you need to read this Christmas!