Christmas Fromage- The Secret Shopper Unwrapped

Thursday,  17 November 2011

The Secret Shopper Unwrapped-Chapters 1-10 
Recap and Review

As Christmas is fast approaching, I thought it would be appropriate to have some Christmas cheer  cheese and it comes to you in the form of "The Secret Shopper Unwrapped" by Kate Harrison. I don't know if you can see it but the tagline for this book is "Shopping is for life, not just for Christmas" which is the most vague and meaningless tagline ever. Personally, I do shop all year round but but I'm not entirely sure that I would say that it greatly affects my life, and 'for life' seems like I am trapped shopping all year, like a shopping Ground Hog Day. I feel like someone could have written a book called "Bread: Is for eating, not just slicing". Anyway, I digress, I think this must be part of a series or something, but anyway, we meet our characters. Emily is a 'yummy mummy' except a bit frumpy according to herself. She is a semi-recent divorcee but that would never do for a Christmas book  so she has some hot boyfriend who is super awesome in every way and loves taking care of her son, Freddie. They own a shop of some kind but it is not doing well because no one, including us, dear readers, know what it sells. There are several mentions of the economic downturn which is fitting.

Next is Sandra/ Sandie. Important plot point ahead:she is black! She also has a super awesome, but white, boyfriend who's conservative family doesn't want any non-white people in it. She runs a consulting business where she basically goes to people's shops, tells them they're rubbish and how they should fix it. Is this a real job? Because, if so-I want it! I know of several shops that I would like to consult on this matter. Note to self: google this. However, Sandie is in the family way, which is uber crap for several reasons. A.)Her family is super conservative and doesn't believe in pre-marital shenanigans. B.) His family is uber conservative and doesn't believe in the mixing of the races. C.) She doesn't like kids. This brings us to another character-Kelly. Kelly is some chavvy girl who likes shoplifting (it's just like shopping!) and bailing her dad out of trouble with drug dealers or some other bad folks. She lives above some Argentineans with strange (not Spanish) accents. One of them is a security guard who busts her for shoplifting but lets her go on account of her bad family life. He gets her an interview with Sandie. Sandie spends the whole interview trying not to puke and Kelly spends the whole interview feeling sorry for herself. Sandie doesn't hire her on account of her running off  but due to mitigating circumstances she winds up with the job. However, this is all we find out for this time.

Our last character is Grazia. She is an Italian expat (presumably) Her husband died a few books years ago and she has decided it is time to get back on the horse, as it were, by having sex with some asshole who tells her her boobs are saggy and she's bad in the sack. Frankly, this would not be my method of getting 'my confidence back' but to each their own. I hope some upcoming chapters have a scene where she tells him his man-bits are wrinkly and then injects them with botox or something.

The gist is that these 3 ladies are super glamorous and go shopping a lot and have various misadventures. What these will be we will have to wait till next week.