Customer Reviews

Love: A User's Guide: A Novel of Romance with Attitude

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Have you ever had a crush on a celebrity? How would you feel if the celebrity has a crush on you? That's what happened to Amy, the precocious heroine in this charming love story.

Working for Vogue magazine, Amy spends endless days and nights dressing Euro-trash models. To her disappointment, the job is not as glamorous as she thought it would be. But when she meets Orlando Rock, a famous actor in England, she feels that she has found the jet-set life she has dreamed of. Amy wants to attend movie premieres, cast parties, photo shoots -- in other words, she wants to become a celebrity in her own right. But all Orlando wants is a private life and a relationship with a "normal" woman. Does Amy love Orlando, or is she using him?

This novel vaguely resembles the movie Notting Hill, but the romance in the book is much better. I highly recommend it!

I read this book in two days while laying out in the sun at the beach . . . and did not notice my sunburn until it was too late! It is a delightful, cute, funny, quick read. So the main character isn't completely realistic -- but I think everyone can relate to her on some level. Who hasn't imagined being interviewed by People Magazine or Entertainment Tonight? Who hasn't watched the Oscars and imagined what it would be like to walk down the red carpet? Amy has her ups and downs and takes us along on her hilarious adventures -- it is a vivid and humorous look into a twenty-something's life. If you're looking for something more insightful or with more meaning, this is not the book for you. However, I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an easy diversion from everyday life. Only one problem -- after reading this, you start to think that it would be possible for a famous actor to cross your path and fall in love with you and your less-than-glamorous life!

Someone needs to inject a little reality among all the rave reviews on this page. This is a horrible book, a muddled mess. Its biggest problem is Amy, possibly the world's most shallow, unlikeable heroine, who truly doesn't deserve the happy ending she receives. The charming hero (the one saving grace of the book) is so appealing one wonders what he could possibly see in a twit like Amy. Plus, the book sometimes steps back and takes a detached, omniscient-narrator tone that is supremely irritating and simply doesn't work. Worst of all, the book isn't funny at all, although it tries valiantly to be.

I realize that not every piece of literature needs to be deeply meaningful, but it should at least be well written and somewhat convincing. This book fails on both counts, and on many others. Avoid it unless you're in the mood for a less-straightforward version of a Harlequin romance.

I picked up this book after both Bridget Jones books which I enjoyed immensely. It seemed like a great premise for a book, ordinary girl gets extraordinary movie star. What girl wouldn't want a fantasy like that? The only problem was the leading lady. Amy starts out as being very down on herself, TOO down on herself! It gets excruciating to read just how horrible she thinks she is. Yet she continually gets men in the book, its not like she's some sort of toad. By the end of the novel she not only thinks TOO highly of herself, but the narrator who started out with her being an ordinary girl starts to describe her as this incredible beauty. So there goes the original premise of the story. Not believeable at all! To top it all off the poor leading man in this story should have ditched the egotistical self serving girl by the end of this book instead of sticking with her. Girl gets incredible handsome movie star. Girl instead fantasizes about his onscreen character. Give me a break! Great just isn't good enough for this girl. And her horrible flatmates, how she went from being cinderella to the stepsisters to being best friends with them again I'll never know. That part was just glossed right over. I finished the book to see if there was anything redeeming about it and was not very happy when I was done. It could have been done SO much better. Two Stars for a great story idea that could have been much more.

Imagine -- a gorgeous, world-famous, universally desired yet down-to-earth celebrity falls madly in love with your quirky smart beauty, in spite of malicious press and his sexy costar. Sounds like a teenybopper fantasy? That's pretty much the description of "Love: A User's Guide," where Clare Naylor tries to make a smarter version of Bridget Jones... and fails miserably.

Amy works at Vogue, but in one of the less glamourous jobs -- she dresses anorexic models and fashionistas in the latest styles. She's also mired in her high-school inferiority complex -- she's one of those infuriating characters who are gorgeous, believe themselves to be Quasimodo. Despite this, she has quite a few quickies, including a fling with another woman.

Then she meets Orlando Rock, a broodingly handsome celebrity who immediately falls for her. Amy tentatively enters a relationship with him, rife with her own insecurities -- which only gets worse when she sees tabloid pics of his sultry costar smooching him.

The only thing that makes an idiot look even more profoundly stupid is when the idiot tries to pass himself off as an intellectual. And Clare Naylor's efforts to create a "smart" chick-lit fail miserably -- the book comes across as aimless, plodding and hyperdramatic.

Naylor obviously had no real plot in mind, beyond celebrity-falls-for-everywoman. The plot wanders around aimlessly, trying to be dramatic over Amy's jealousy or poor gorgeous Orlando being pursued by beautiful women. Naylor even tries to spice it up with a lesbian encounter, but it feels confusingly random. And somebody needs to tell Clare Naylor that it takes more to make a smart character than name-dropping Bronte and Baudelaire.

Speaking of which, the greatest flaw of the book is Amy -- a naive, neurotic, brainless mess who believes she is intelligent if she can ramble off a few lines from Shakespeare. A genuinely intelligent woman would be smart enough to not try to flaunt her taste for Bronte on the beach. And Orlando is merely a walking Ken doll who is tailor-made for Amy's neurotic desires. The more interesting supporting characters like Lucy are given short shrift.

A meandering mess, "Love: A User's Guide" comes across merely as an embarrassing schoolgirl fantasy. This shallow disaster is what gives chick-lit a bad name.

I should be sorry to say this, but I'm not: this is a HORRIBLE book. The style of writing was extremely hard to understand, and I had an easier time reading one of my economics textbooks than trying to read this. Not many books can give you a headache after trying to decipher a single page...and not succeeding. I even tried flipping through to see if the story got better, but it didn't at all. Aside from the writing style, the main character wasn't someone you *wanted* to read about. She just wasn't likable at all. I couldn't even finish one chapter before wanting to hurl it into the nearest trashcan, and that's saying a lot, considering I read pretty much everything. You're better off reading *Milkrun* or *Burning the Map* anything but this book.

This book was totally unbelievable, and I mean that in the bad way. The only reason I read it was because of the wonderful reviews, and I was very disappointed. Of course, I wasn't expecting too much from a book with a cartoon drawing on the cover, but I didn't think it would be written for a 12-year old reading level either. I'm giving it two stars because somehow, I managed to finish it.

I loved this book. It was fun, smart, energetic, and down right lovable. I couldn't stop reading it and stayed up til 4am to get it done. It's a fast read, but you can savor every page and know that you have been treated with the enternal thoughts and feelings of a girl just like anyother. We can only hope to meet "our" prince charming as our lovely main character did....and, maybe he'll even be a movie star.

This was a wonderful book, I would recomend it to anyone looking for a sweet book that just brings you up. Once you get into this book, which doesn't take long, you absolutely can't put it down! You will get so caught up in the sweet and exciting romance of Orlando and Amy, you'll wish it was happening to you. It isn't one of those dissappointing books that gets you all happy and then drops you off a cliff, it is sweet and ends just the way you want it to. This book sweetens up life and reminds you of the good times you know you've had. This book was great! A quick read too!

I bought this book because of the glowing reviews and was utterly dissappointed. The year's only half over but I would definitely put this down as one of the worst reads of the year. The characters are all one-dimensional and the storyline completely uninteresting. I can't understand all the five-star reviews--what did I miss?