Private Lives

by Tasmina Perry

[Leah]

I read my first Tasmina Perry novel earlier this year when I picked up Daddy’s Girls. It was an enjoyable enough novel, although I felt at 600 pages it was rather hefty and a bit overly-long. So you can imagine my shock when I received a proof copy of Tasmina’s new book Private Lives that it came in at just under 700 pages. I mean, that is mega. That’s the length of a Jilly Cooper novel. By accident or design, I generally don’t read novels over 500 pages, but the plot of Private Lives intrigued me so I picked up the hefty novel and I gave it a read, finishing it in two days.

Private Lives is a very topical novel. It’s very on-the-button considering the super-injunction scandals that appear to be the ‘in’ thing for 2011. It all came to a head shortly before Private Lives was released when Ryan Giggs was named in the House of Commons as the man who’d had an affair with Imogen Thomas, so Tasmina was very on the money with her novel, it was released in perfect time with the Giggs scandal blowing up. Being a huge celebrity gossip fan super-injunctions intrigue me so the idea of a novel being set all around them, all around media law as it’s known, was very, very interesting for me and no one is better placed to write about it than Tasmina Perry who is a former lawyer herself and I felt she wrote a very absorbing novel and she managed to make a story out of it without having to be long-winded in her lawyerly explanations – it’s so easy for a former lawyer to try and explain everything properly that we end up tired and sleepy, but all lawyerly things are kept to a minimum and it’s very easy to follow.

Primarily, Private Lives is about Anna Kennedy as she sets about uncovering the person who leaked Sam Charles’ one night stand with a hooker after her own super-injunction was thrown out of court, which then turns into Anna inadvertently unlocking all kinds of secrets as she ends up looking into the death of Amy Hart, who seemingly fell down the stairs to her death. But there’s also a lot more to it than that. There are plots flying all over the place, frankly: There’s Sam Charles, who after his scandal has gone from being Hollywood’s hero to Hollywood’s zero and his girlfriend Jessica who is devastated over his affair and also finds her Hollywood star waning. Matt Donovan has just been handed the reigns of Donovan Pierce, alongside Helen Pierce, after his father, Larry, decided to retire. There is loads going on in the book but I felt it was all nicely connected, it all linked up very well and if I had to question anything it would be Jessica’s story as that kind of tailed off, despite the nasty things she was doing come the end of the novel.

Novels like this one aren’t really character-driven. Mainly because, mostly, the characters are usually very horrible people. So it’s the plots that drive the novel and although the plot drove it well, I did actually find myself liking some of the characters (I know, surprising, right?). Anna Kennedy was a very likeable character and I was with her all the way as she fought for various things, although mainly I just wanted her to uncover what happened to Amy, I was dying for that plot to explode and for it all to unravel. I was interested in Anna, I wanted her to find out the truth and expose people for what they really were. The rest weren’t as stand-out, with many of them being the typical characters you don’t really care for, although I did also like Matthew Donovan and, I suppose, a bit of me liked Sam Charles, he was rather charming, despite his cheating. But, mainly, the book wasn’t necessarily about the characters, and that was fine by me because the plot itself was so juicy.

I absolutely loved Private Lives. Despite giving me wrist-ache, it was a thoroughly enjoyable novel. I mean my proof copy was terribly written but it’s testament to the story that I carried on, rather than chucking it out and buying a proper copy, because it was totally absorbing with many different strands coming off it culminating in one big reveal. Like I said, I felt Jessica and Sam’s storyline was rather left hanging, considering the revelations we learned about Jessica, but for the most part the novel was wrapped up brilliantly. Tasmina Perry is a brilliant story-teller. I mean, not once during the almost 700 pages did I feel the plot lagged or the pace slow. That’s quite a feat, because most people would run out of steam after 300 pages, never mind being able to carry it on for over double that. But the pages do just fly by, I’ve finished it not believing it was so long because it was so good. It’s a novel that’s very on-point and it’s one I really loved. I’ll definitely be reading my copy of Kiss Heaven Goodbye soon, because if it’s anything like Private Lives, it’ll be another great read. I definitely recommend it, it’s the whole package: beautiful cover, brilliant plot and it kept me hooked. Result!