How Not To Shop (Annie Valentine)

by Carmen Reid

[Leah]

Personal shopper Annie Valentine is about to hit the big time: presenting a glamorous TV makeover series! But too late, Annie discovers this is TV on a shoestring. They’re paying her buttons and her budget is zip. Can she make do with Primark when all she wants is Prada? While Annie performs miracles with the minimum, boyfriend Ed is left at home with one son (deeply green), one daughter (deeply teen) and one sexy, Russian blonde (don’t ask). He’s not happy. He wants more together-time. He wants a dog. He may even want…a baby! But could non-stop, fame-seeking Annie ever handle that?

For a while now I’ve been collecting Carmen Reid’s personal shopper series which features Annie Valentine. For some reason, they never properly appealed to me, but I’ve carried on getting the books. I now have all five, and I finally decided to give the first book The Personal Shopper a go. I thoroughly enjoyed it and soon after I read the second book in the series Late Night Shopping. Again, I loved it and when I found I had nothing else to read, I headed straight for book three How Not To Shop, hoping for yet another fantastic read and I wasn’t disappointed.

When we last left Annie Valentine, she was told that she was going to be starring in a TV series, after spending many years as a personal shopper. When we pick up with her at the beginning of How Not To Shop, Annie is getting ready to begin filming for her TV show, along with best friend Ukrainian beauty Svetlana and the frosty ex-Apprentice contestant Miss Marlise. Things aren’t quite what Annie expected though when she finds out the show will be airing on one of the lesser-known TV stations not to mention her budget is zip. As you might expect, things don’t turn out too well for Annie but if there’s one thing we know about her it’s that she won’t go down without a fight.

Also the focus of the plot is Annie’s family life. Her relationship with Ed is still going well, although he suddenly decides a baby would complete their little family, but Annie doesn’t want another baby as she already has 16-year-old Lana and 12-year-old Owen. One of the best written things during all the books so far has been Annie’s family life and I love when it’s the four of them together. Yes, there are dramas (how could their not be when Annie Valentine is involved?) but they’re a tight unit and that makes it so special. Annie’s sister Dinah is trying to get pregnant again, so her daughter Billie can have a sibling. Reid presents Dinah’s struggle very realistically and I also liked Reid’s handling of Annie and Dinah’s mother Fern’s illness. Because although the books can be a bit light and fun, there are darker issues that occur and Reid handles them very well.

Annie Valentine is rapidly becoming one of my most memorable and favourite female characters ever. She seems to jump off the page with so much life to her, and I like her more and more as the books progress. Even her use of the word ‘babes’ no longer annoys me at all, it’s just another Annie V quirk. I continue to adore Ed. He isn’t a typical leading male at all, as he takes on Annie’s kids with minimum fuss, puts up with Annie’s hectic lifestyle and is a music teacher and I totally admire the fact he isn’t moody or a bad boy or whatever else you usually find in Chick Lit novels. Annie’s two kids are as great as ever, and I like getting to see them more and more as the books begin to focus more on them. One character I really went off a bit, though, was Svetlana. During the first two novels she was a token character. There to be beautiful and Ukrainian and to marry rich men, but she has a big storyline in How Not To Shop and it didn’t put her in a nice light at all. I enjoyed the storyline, just not how Svetlana dealt with it all.

Like the previous two books How Not To Shop is written in the third-person perspective which changes all the time, from Annie to Svetlana, to Ed, and it fleshes the story out very well. Despite being at work whilst I was reading this book, I managed to finish it relatively quickly as it was very hard to put down. I kept wanting to read on and on to see how it would all pan out for Annie and co. There’s nothing stale about the series, and as long as Reid keeps it up, she can write about Annie Valentine for a long time to come. How Not To Shop even made me laugh out loud – not good, when you’re laughing to yourself whilst sitting at a bus stop, I can tell you. Reid has hit the money with her series about a personal shopper, and fans of Kinsella’s Shopaholic series will undoubtedly fall in love with Annie and her madcap family.