The Personal Shopper (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

[Leah]

Meet Annie Valentine: stylish, savvy, multi-tasker extraordinaire. As a personal shopper in a swanky London fashion store, Annie can re-style and re-invent her clients from head to toe. In fact, this super-skilled dresser can be relied on to solve everyone’s problems . . . except her own. Although she’s a busy single mum to stroppy teen Lana and painfully shy Owen, there’s a gap in Annie’s wardrobe – sorry, life – for a new man. But finding the perfect partner is turning out to be so much trickier than finding the perfect pair of shoes. Can she source a genuine classic? A life long investment? Will she end up with a mistake from the sale rail, who’ll have to be returned? Or maybe, just maybe, there’ll be someone new in this season who could be the one . .

For a while now I’ve been collecting Carmen Reid’s novels. It started when I received a copy of How Not To Shop, the third Annie Valentine book. I then picked up the first two books because I hate starting a book mid-series, before I then received the fourth book in the series Celebrity Shopper. It wasn’t until I got the fifth book New York Valentine that I decided it was either now or never. I was either going to read all five Annie Valentine novels, or it was never going to happen. I took the former route and got stuck into book one The Personal Shopper, hoping I would enjoy it, especially since I have four other novels in the series to read. Thankfully, I found the book pleasantly surprising.

As you might expect from the title, the book focuses on the life of a personal shopper. Annie Valentine is not only a personal shopper, but a budding entrepreneur (with her own Ebay shop front!), she’s brilliant at sourcing bargains and can do up a flat quicker than you can say “Bob’s your uncle”. Not only that, but Annie’s a single mum with two children: fourteen-year-old stroppy teen Lana, and painfully shy nine-year-old Owen. (For the record, I have no idea how she fitted all her endeavors into 24-hour days.) But the one place which Annie has yet to succeed is in her love life, after her husband Roddy left three years earlier. She’s desperate to find someone to share her life with, but so far it’s just not working, until Gray comes into the picture. But is he Annie’s Mr Right?

Obviously, with a book about a personal shopper, there’s going to be a lot of fashion mentioned, and there is. The beginning of each chapter gives a run down of the clothes a certain person featured in the chapter is wearing, along with the total estimated cost. It’s a very intriguing feature and despite not being very fashion-y myself, I did enjoy those lists and looked forward to the next chapter to see who was featured. But something that may surprise readers is that the book isn’t only about Annie as a personal shoppper. The book explores Annie’s relationhip with her kids, as well as the struggles she faces as a single mum, as she desperately tries to keep her kids in the posh school they’ve attended since they were three or four. I’ve no idea what it’s like to be a single mother, but I felt Reid did a great job with her portrayal of Annie’s struggles.

I must admit, I did like Annie. Reid has somehow managed to portray Annie in such a real way that I could very clearly hear her Cockney accent every time she spoke. She’s someone I could easily admire and her super-woman capabilities were astounding at times, but that’s obviously what most single mums find themselves facing, isn’t it? I really loved Annie’s kids, Lana was a typical teenager at times, but she had some great moments and as for Owen, I just wanted to give him a hug. I suppose the only character I didn’t particularly warm to was Gray, a man Annie meets at her mother’s retirement party. He was the only character that didn’t seem ‘real’ to me, he just came across a bit fake. Ed, on the other hand, Lana and Owen’s teacher, was fantastic. I knew already how the book would end, and what Ed’s place was going to be, but I enjoyed getting to know him better and I liked how the relationship between him and Annie progressed. Finally, I would like to mention Connor, Annie’s gay best friend. He was such a sweetie.

All throughout the book there’s an air of mystery about what happened with Annie’s husband Roddy. Unfortunately for me, I guessed the twist about half way through the book. There isn’t anything that gives it away, but something was telling me my assumption was spot on. Aside from that – and Annie’s constant use of the word “babes” – they were my only issues with the book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It’s told from the third person narrative, which works really well. I can’t wait to get stuck into further books in the series, because although the first book can be read as a stand alone as there’s no cliffhanger ending to The Personal Shopper, I’m quite excited to get back into Annie’s world and see where her adventures take her!