Customer Reviews

Pretty Woman: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

OK, in the prologue the main character accuses her best friend of being jealous because she's 25 pounds heavier but she's the one getting married.

The friend is a size six. The heroine is a size 14.

That's a 25 pound difference? I don't think so!

Then, three years later, the heroine struggles out of bed and hugs her knees... no mean feat for a size 16 woman! (GASP! The horror! Call Greenpeace, NOW!) She looks in the mirror and sees nine rolls of fat flowing down her body... she's HUGE! She's a BLIMP! (Never mind that the average size of women in the U.S. is a 14.)

We hear her moaning about how much weight she's gained since she got married... and yup, on page 65 she says of her marriage, "I was so miserable, I started to eat. As you can see, I packed on fifty-five pounds."

WOW! She put on 55 pounds and only went from a size 14 to a size 16? I'm soooo jealous!!!

The author's insistence that a size 16 marks a woman as a candidate for blimphood is annoying. The inconsistencies I noted above detract from what could otherwise be an enjoyable book. C'mon, you want to write a fat story? Write about a LARGE woman... size 26, size 28. NOT a woman who's a size 14/16.

They say "write what you know". Obviously this author doesn't have a clue. The least she could have done was look up some facts and tried to make this heroine's "weight problem" a little believable. (I can't imagaine a size 16 woman with 9 rolls of fat hanging off her body; that is, unless she's about 3 feet tall! Hey, maybe that's it! The heroine is a midget & the author forgot to tell us!)

I also, can't, stand the way she sticks, commas, into her sententences: randomly. Bad punctuation; sucks!!!

And no, I can't overlook these errors and "just enjoy the story"; it's like getting a salad at a restaurant with a big old hair in it & being told to "Just enjoy it! It tastes good anyway, right?"

WRONG!!!

First of all I could not get over how a size 14 is so obese and disgusting. Give me a break! I also didn't like her style of writing. It was very juvenile and seemed like the book was written over a weekend. It's one of the worst books I have ever read!

While the story line was good. The constant doubt and whining of both the heroine and the villian were hard to bear without moaning or also whining.

In Savannah, Georgia Vickie Williams warned her best friend and business partner Rosie Gardener not to marry the philandering Kent Bliss. Vickie accuses her size 6 friend of jealousy because a size 14 like her could have such a fiancé. Rosie accepts a job as companion to elderly Adeline Summers and leaves for Europe.

Three years later Rosie is miserable as Kent treats her like dirt except for short moments when she buys him expensive presents. She asks him to be home for their anniversary dinner, but he gives her a lame excuse. Rosie has had it with Kent. She takes his name off of everything and when he finally comes home she kicks him out. Rosie is beginning to regain her self esteem when she runs into Vickie, who is back in town following the death of Adeline. They hug and pick up the friendship as if nothing happened. Meanwhile Rosie obtains a physical fitness trainer widow Jack Silver and has won the three hundred plus million dollar lottery, but refuses to acknowledge her victory if Kent gets even a cent. Kent knows she won and plans to take it all.

Though Rosie makes the weight loss seem too easy (the easy is putting it on), fans will enjoy her retaking control of her life with the help of friends. Rosie is the focus of the story line as she gains courage to finally confront her errors. Although Kent is unhinged when he blames her for his total fall from grace, contemporary fans will enjoy seeing him receive his comeuppance even if the story line seems too simplistic.

Harriet Klausner

This reviewer would hazard a guess, bourne out by previous reviews here, that author Fern Michaels offends the very reader base for whom she writes "Pretty Woman," a very predictable bit of beach reading romantic fluff wherein the reader knows from the get-go that the heroine is going to do the ugly-duckling-into-beautiful-swan thing and get the guy. What grates is that Ms Michaels repeatedly describes and disparages her heroine as a hopeless blimp guilty of the unforgivable/mortal sin of being a size 14 at the beginning of the metamorphosis.

News Flash to Fern: Marilyn Monroe was a size 16. The average woman in the USA today is a size 12. <-So sayeth Good Housekeeping magazine, July 2005, page 106. The superslim and svelte are not we who consume your stuff!

/TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

I have never read Fern Daniels before, but since I got this book as a gift I felt I owed it to the giver to read it. Words are far too cheap to describe how badly I detested this book. If I could give it zero stars instead of one, I would.

What struck me right out of the gate was how elementary the dialogue was and how one-dimensional the characters were. Their emotions turned on a dime, and they did complete life-changes from one chapter to the next. The dueling plotlines - from the main character's speedy weight loss and perfunctory slips to what to do with a winning lottery ticket - rang false and made-up to me.

There were also too many distracting subplots to even care about, and the gratuitous mysticism was ludicrous.

In the future, I will not feel any kind of obligation to waste my time reading another Fern Daniels book.

This was my first Fern Michaels book also, and it will also be my last. I am amazed that this caliber of writing is considered worthy of print! There are several things that bother me about this book. For one thing, there is a severe lack of character development. To be honest, I have 90 more pages to go before I finish the book, and yet I do not in any way feel an ounce of affection for Rosie. She is whiny and demanding. There was no effort made to develop believable chemistry between her and Jack. As a matter of fact, most of their interactions have been merely glossed over after the fact. We are told that there exists a spark between them, but I want to read about longing glances or unintentional touches--the build-up is what makes a great romance novel. Sadly, there is none of that here. Also, the dialouge is atrocious. No one speaks like that! It is very distracting!

I guess the thing that bothers me the most about this book is that it doesn't know what it wants to be--a romance novel? A friendship story? A mystery? Self-help perhaps? It would appear that Fern Michaels wants it to be all of the above, but in the process has made a jumbled mess that does justice to none of them. She would have been much smarter to leave many of the peripheral characters (including Vickie Winters) out of the story. It wouldn't have made it a 5-star novel, but it would have been a heck of a lot shorter, and that alone would make it immensely more readable.

I got to page 13 before I did something I've never, ever done before in my long life of reading - I threw this book away.

When picking up this novel at my local bookstore, I was excited to get to reading it after an enticing description. Rosie is a character that many people can relate to, obese, low self esteem. And as the villian, Kent was deliciously bad. I read anxiously as to what was going to happen to these characters.

But in the end, I was very dissappointed. Maybe I'm idealistic, but the sudden, and I mean sudden change of heart by Kent gave me whiplash. I wanted for him "to get what's coming to him" and have the heroin triumphant and rub it in his face. Also, Vickie, Rosie's best friend has such a minor role in this novel. The character of Luna was hysterical to me.

Over all it was a dissappointing ending, but a very easy read. Maybe good for the beach.

But hey, it's only my opinion.

About this book:

Rosie Garderner and her best friend Vickie Winters were extremely close but when Vickie, who only wanted the best for her friend, tries to tell Rosie the man she is about to marry is a loser, things go very bad, so bad they quit speaking. Rosie finally realizes, after three years, that Vickie was right. She throws her husband, Kent, out. Unfortunately the next day she finds she had purchased a winning lottery ticket, one worth $302 million! How can she keep Kent's hands off the money? How does she rebuild her self-esteem? How does she move on?

Rosie reconnects with Vicki and starts on a new life by hiring a trainer to help her lose weight and shape up!.

My take:

While listening to the book, the first thing I noticed is the author had no clue as to what size and weight woman wears what dress size. I realized this when Rosie admitted being 25 pounds heavier than Vicki but Rosie wore a size 14 while Vickie wore a size 6. Really? I would think any woman would know that, for smaller sizes, each size translate to about 15 pounds difference. It made me wonder if Fern is a woman or not. And a size 14 to 16 has nine rolls of fat? Really?

Beyond this, the plot is okay. Rosie gets in shape, maybe a little too fast, and competes in a triathlon against her husband. Every divorced woman's dream is to best the creep who made her life miserable. (Same for a divorced husband, I suspect.)

I liked this book and found it entertaining. I especially enjoyed Vickie and wished that she had more of a role in this book. The story does move in an uneven pace where some things make sense when and how they happen, while other things happen too fast or without enough background to support the action, Anyone who likes light romance, may well enjoy this.