From the Bookshelf of 2025 Reading Challenge…

The Little Lady Agency (The Little Lady Agency, #1)

Hester Browne

Start date: April 1, 2012

Finish date: April 30, 2012

Discussion leader: Alia

Why we're reading this: April's group Read…more
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Apr 17, 2012 Kara rated it liked it

Shelves: book-club

Does anyone watch How I Met Your Mother? Did you see the "Oh Honey" episode? Ted gets set up with Honey who is gullible. Very gullible.

Honey: My apartment building is so safe. My landlord even installed a security camera in my shower.
Marshall: Oh, honey...
Honey: Maybe I should feel weird about giving a stranger my Social Security Number, but the guy's a Nigerian prince!
Marshall: Oh, honey...
Honey: I just had a great TV audition...behind the KFC where the executive producer works on the weekend.

Does anyone watch How I Met Your Mother? Did you see the "Oh Honey" episode? Ted gets set up with Honey who is gullible. Very gullible.

Honey: My apartment building is so safe. My landlord even installed a security camera in my shower.
Marshall: Oh, honey...
Honey: Maybe I should feel weird about giving a stranger my Social Security Number, but the guy's a Nigerian prince!
Marshall: Oh, honey...
Honey: I just had a great TV audition...behind the KFC where the executive producer works on the weekend.
Marchall: Oh, honey...
Honey: Long story short, I'm going to be on Lost!
Marshall: Oh, honey!

Melissa was so reminiscent of Honey--how appropriate that "Honey" was the name she chose for herself.

If this hadn't been a book club book, I never would have picked it up. This is the kind of book I actively avoid, but I'm trying to, in fairness, judge this book against books in its genre rather than against the books I normally read. So here we go.

Melissa rubbed me the wrong way from the start. I wanted to shake her. And I felt like she was a bit of a Mary Sue. Everyone thinks she's so wonderful and loves her (unless they're her family or jealous of her), but I didn't see why. She's an extremely naive girl with rabidly low self-esteem. She's a pushover. She's extraordinarily bad at communicating. She escapes through Honey, her business venture personality. And while everyone else can see that Honey is really Melissa, Melissa feels like Honey is a completely different person. Through Honey, she can become more confident, feel sexy, and demand what she wants, but she doesn't think she can do this as Melissa.

I did like Honey, though. And as Melissa became more like Honey, I started liking her more and caring about what happened to her. By the end, I was trying to rush through to find out what happened before I had to rush off for work. Once the book picked up, I actually got into it.

I probably won't pick up the next one in the series, but reading this was an enjoyable experience and a pleasant surprise. ...more

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