Customer Reviews

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I think the reason some people do not like this book is because they are expecting Bridget Jones. While the main character, Olivia, is somewhat similar to Bridget, she is a totally different character and this books reads a lot differenly than the Bridget Jones series. I believe this misconception that this book is along the same lines is why some people did not like the book. I admit the book was slow at the beginning, but once I got into it, I could not put it down and I was laughing out loud right until the end. The plot was very unique and combined serious issues with a daring female spy. Good read!

Olivia Joules, a spy in the making, varies from Helen Fielding's other literary counterpart, Bridget Jones, in that Olivia is gorgeous, reasonably confident and capable whereas Bridget was unsure, average-looking and a bumbler, EXCEPT, like Bridget, Olivia has an overactive imagination.

Olivia Joules is primarily a modern spy thriller, conscious of the post-9/11 era. In the beginning, we meet journalist Olivia after she's been demoted by her pompous boss (a recurring character in Fielding's books) to covering launches of facial creams. She is assigned to a launch in South Beach.

Here is where the book gets fun. She whisks off to South Beach, where she meets a dashing gentlemen, then to Catalina Island, then Honduras, and, before you know it, you're in the midst of escapist beach reading where you can feel the sun and see the blue-green water. Of course, in the end, our hero Olivia's overactive imagination is validated and saves the day.

This book is light; it's meant to be so. Fielding can write this type of lit and she is truly humorous. I think the only criteria for a book like this is "was it fun?" For me, yes.

Wow, seems like people either loved it or hated it....well...I LOVED THIS BOOK. I flew through it in three days...couldn't put it down! It has parts that are just hilarious, it is suspenseful and I really didn't expect a lot of what happened. Although, I didn't try to analyze it too much either. It is simply a fun read. If you like the show Alias, you will love this. I have loved all of Helen Feildings books and will continue to buy them...in hardcover at that! There is more to be said about this book, but not without giving too much away. And I agree, I hate that.

poor alicia dee. i feel what you're saying, honey. i hate it when people give away the entire plot to the book on the reviews. honestly, couldn't people just write a review without writing the entire synopsis of it? (wait, lemme go check my other reviews to see if i did that or not...)

i love olivia. love her. i feared helen fielding would make her massively dull like rosie in cause celeb, one of the worst books i've ever forced myself to read. of course, olivia isn't as endearingly dorky as bridget, but she has her own flaws and idiosyncracies which makes her all the more... olivia. the book, plot, and ideas stand out on their own and away from bridget so if you're expecting bridgetisms, olivia ain't it.

i felt that the book, though good, was somewhat dry until professor widgett got involved. hey, yo, i don't care how old he is, he's my new literary lust creature. i want him!!!

oops, sorry alicia dee...

This book was so much fun to read! I loved getting caught up in the book, I felt like I was there with Olivia. It's perfect if you want a light read but with adventure and wit!

I bought this book, and the first and second Bridget Jones books last year together at the same time. (I was pregnant, in my last trimester- so I had a lot of time to spend reading!) I read the Bridget Jones books first, and was just head over heels for them. I loved them. I loved Olivia Joules as well. I never start a book with any assumptions, as it will most definitely make it less enjoyable. I thought it was wonderful.
By the way, nice job to the reviewer that spoiled the whole book. I was considering re-reading it because I had forgotten it, but you've just summed it up for me...so thanks.

I've read all Fielding's books and I love her style of writing, so I picked this one up months ago and finally got around to starting it. It was slow going at first, but there is plenty to keep interested. By the 100th page, I couldn't put it down and missed a lot of sleep as a result! In typical Fielding style, Olivia is flawed but lovable, insightful and hilarious! I don't want to give too much away, but her mysterious boyfriend is probably one of the funniest male characters I've read in a while (although he's supposed to be a scary terrorist!) The whole effect was wonderful. Like I said, it's not perfect but a fun read... so I really don't understand the bad reviews. Buy it and enjoy it!

While I can't fully relate to Fielding sex-crazed heroines, and while I did not care to be (as one reviewer stated it) "inflicted" with Fielding's politics, I would not wish to deny that this was an amazingly entertaining read. I must be among the few in that I liked it better than Bridget Jones. It was the first work of pop fiction in some time that I have been able to read cover to cover without skimming. I tend to delight myself with nonfiction and the classics, and I have a hard time not being bored by pop. fiction. Did this grab me because of its intellectual depth, its profundity, its complexity of language? Certainly not. It grabbed me because it was funny, entertaining...farcical. And that last word is the key-if you don't like farce and you want a "serious" thriller, by all means, skip this! It's widely implausible, as it is meant to be. (SPOILERS) I actually though it rather more of a twist that Pierre did in fact turn out to be a terrorist, since the reader is expecting he won't and that it will just be some comical mistake of Olivia's. Once that bit is revealed, the plot does become much more predictable and not quite as enjoyable, but I still had no problem plodding on through to the end. I found Olivia's character to be a bit undulating; she seems the Nancy Drew type one second and the Bridget Jones type the next-that is, she seems suddenly to become a very capable agent after being a bit of a silly journalist. Well, she's a bit silly throughout, I suppose. Despite its flaws, I very much enjoyed it.

My daughter got this from the library while we were on vacation, and passed it on to me to read before she returned it. She loved it. I wasn't quite as enamored.

I didn't hate it, either. It was a fun read, but didn't have a whole lot of substance to it.

Anyway, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination is like a comedy version of the movie Conspiracy Theory. Olivia is a journalist who sees conspiracies and Big Stories everywhere, and finally stumbles on to one, by sheer accident.

My main complaint about the story is that it was too firmly straddling the fence between being a semi-serious James Bond-type story and being an over-the-top Stephanie Plum-type story. If it had leaned more either way, I'd have been much happier with it. Instead, we're asked to believe, for example, that the CIA would recruit her on the spot as an agent because of her overactive imagination and without the support of the entire book being completely over-the-top, things like that just fall flat.

The romance, too, was too wishy-washy. I'd have been happier with it being focused on either less or more, or even left out completely. As it was, I couldn't believe in it, and it felt out of place.

I did, however, love Olivia's "Rules for Living." (#1: "Don't panic." #2: "No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.") In fact, I think they made the book for me. Without them, I'd probably have given the book 3 or 3.5 stars. Not just that the rules were present, but what they were, and how Olivia referred to them at times throughout the story.

I've enjoyed all of the Helen Fielding books I've read mainly because they're a lot of fun; light hearted and a bit neurotic. This book was no exception! Although a bit far fetched, it was a fun read, with a mixture of romance and intrigue. The main character, Olivia, was irresistible -- her "rules for living" were so clever that I actually hear myself repeating them as I manage my day! I read it while on vacation and listened to the audio version (which was excellent!) while driving errands around town with my young children. This book isn't "rocket science" but was an entertaining and enjoyable trip which was a great escape from the day to day grind.