my dirty little secret

[ I love the shopaholic books.

It happened last year, one day I was looking at books in Oxfam and I thought "I wonder what these are actually like to read..." and I bought my first pastel book. It was partly to celebrate the end of having to force myself to read difficult or sensible books at uni; partly because I was curious. So I spent 99p on a ridiculous book about a woman who buys so much unnecessary crap that she gets herself into thousands of pounds worth of debt, so much debt, in fact, that she is pursued by her bank manager. But she still manages to fall in love with a handsome and intelligent (also extremely rich) man. Do you want to vomit now? I would completely understand that reaction.

But the thing is, it was so much fun. She gets herself into a ridiculous scrape, one that (I hope) no real life person would get into, but everything is OK in the end. I'm sure everyone has had or has (especially at the moment) a bank account that makes them feel fairly nauseous, but you've probably not been pursued by your bank manager to the television studio where you are appearing on live t.v. Likewise, you might have had a nightmare organising a wedding and dealing with the expectations and wishes of both families, but you've probably not had two weddings organised for you on the same day on different continents. She's a bigger mess than you are, but everything works out for her, just like it will for you. Yes these books are incredibly formulaic,but that's what you want from them. It is so comforting to read a book where you know that everything will be ok in the end, and it's not the end until everything is ok. I've not given in tp the pastel books completely: the only ones I own are shopaholic books that a bought from the charity shop but I wouldn't look down on anyone who has. Yes, chick lit is trashy...but did anyone claim it isn't?