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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fun and engaging, August 22, 2009
Angie Howard is running away from home, literally. Her mother chases her onto the train platform and Angie barely manages to slam the door shut as the train pulls out of the station. She's headed for London with some cash she has stolen from her mother, her mother's address book to help her find her estranged Uncle John, and a carry-on hastily filled with clothes but no underwear.
Angie seems to know more of what she doesn't want than what she does want. She has no idea where she is going with her life, not to mention finding her way around London.
Angie is your typical hapless heroine that causes havoc whichever way she turns. Her relationships with her gay, female-impersonator, uncle, a gorgeous waiter named Phillipe, a gay bouncer named Derek, and a German chef, Heinrich, obsessed with his kitchen and mushrooms, are all a disaster.
Angie's adventures are fun up until the point where everything falls apart and she is forced to return home with her mother. This is where the book turns from fun to engaging. Angie and her mother finally have an honest conversation and Angie faces the truth about her deceased father with courage and maturity.
The characters are all well-developed and the story kept my interest. The ending was fairly predictable, but I would still recommend this book.
Pink Champagne and Apple Juice is a quick, easy and entertaining read.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review from David Gardiner of Gold Dust Magazine, January 14, 2009
This review is from: Pink Champagne and Apple Juice (Kindle Edition)
'This is the odyssey of a young girl running away from her Essex home to big bad London, where she finds temporary accommodation with black sheep of the family, Uncle John, who is enjoying a successful career as the drag queen and night club proprietor "Jolene" in (of all places) Muswell Hill. She goes through a series of adventures, romantic and otherwise, in pursuit of her dream of running a sophisticated cafe/restaurant, and we watch her personal unfolding brought about by the process. The opening chapters seem light and amusing, and are written in a style so straightforward and conversational as to seem almost artless. This is not however a criticism, because it ensures that the author doesn't intrude into what is in fact a very involving and quite touching rite of passage story about growing up and pursuing your dreams in the adult world. Although the early chapters are played almost entirely for laughs, as the story progresses many extra layers emerge (and it becomes a little raunchy), but the lightness of touch is never lost. Angie and Uncle John turn into far more human and engaging characters than we might have expected, with emotional lives that the reader can no longer dismiss as comic hyperbole. This is in fact a much better and more serious book than it seems at first. It deals with the struggle of a young girl to break away from home and become a person in her own right who is then strong enough to take on the task of mending her damaged relationship with her mother and finding emotional anchors in a new world away from home. Few of us will fail to see something of our own story in Angie's. Most of all though, it's great entertainment, and you'll find yourself wanting to read it as quickly as you can to find out what happens next. This would be a perfect book to give to a teenage girl who isn't much interested in reading. The author seems completely at ease with her teens/twenties heroine and presents her with affection and understanding and without a whiff of condescension or disapproval. As a result, we like her too and care about what happens to her and how her plans pan out. For a light but not brain-dead summer read, you won't go far wrong with this one.' (A review by David Gardiner of Gold Dust Magazine.)
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasant and Predictable, August 30, 2009
This review is from: Pink Champagne and Apple Juice (Kindle Edition)
I thought this was going to be Bridget Jones meets 'La Cage Aux Folles'. Perhaps I set my sites too high. It wasn't that fun.
The main Character, Angie Howard, is young and inexperienced and naive and I really didn't find myself feeling sypmpathy for her teenage angst. I just found her self-centered and spoiled.
Uncle John, Jolene in the nightclub, wasn't a very complete person to my mind. He made random appearances - often in compromising positions - where he often advanced the plot but never spoke in a voice that said 'nightclub owner' or 'drag queen' or even 'estranged uncle'.
The secondary characters were often stereotypes but that's OK in the this type of a farce; The Handsome French waiter, the Dictatorial, obsessed German Chef, the scary but with a heart of gold Bouncer, the overbearing Mother hiding a secret. Unfortunately, the booked wrapped them all up in little packages where their behavior and story lines were by the numbers and in no way unexpected.
This was not an awful book by any means. It was OK. I didn't have to force myself to finish it or anything like that. I was expecting farce. I was expecting a fun frolic. Instead I got pleasant and predictable.
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