After the epic wordiness of the Song of Ice and Fire, it was great to get a break with something light, like Millie's Fling by Jill Mansell. What follows below is a review of the book as well as some discussion questions. Spoiler alert for anything you read below the break.
As the book begins, our heroine, Millie, convinces best-selling novelist, Orla Hart, not to kill herself, but loses her boyfriend in the process. Orla then manages to get her fired from her job as well. Feeling bad for all the trouble she's caused, Orla decides to make Millie the heroine of her next novel. She pays her 5,000 pounds to tell her everything that goes on in her life. Millie, who has just lost her job, agrees.
Since Millie, Orla, and Hester's plots are sort of divided, I'm going to divide up their reviews.
Millie: On the way home from celebrating losing her job, Millie and Hester find a man's wallet in the bushes. They go through it and decide to prank call the man- Hugh Emerson- after they assume that his life is amazing. The prank goes horribly wrong when Hugh reveals that his wife has just died a few months before. Wracked with guilt, Millie mails him back his wallet with a note telling him how sorry she is. Millie gets a job at Lucas Kemp's kissogram service as the singing, dancing, roller-skating gorilla. Still thinking about Hugh, she calls him again to apologize and they meet up for drinks. Millie decides not to tell Orla anything about Hugh. Orla, slightly bored of Millie's lack of a love life, throws a party at her house as a not-so-secret way to introduce Millie to some potential suitors. Both turn out to be disasters- Robert the gardener gets drunk and kisses like an aqua-vac and Con the actor is secretly gay. Millie agrees to go with Con's ruse to make his mother, who is dying of cancer, happy. Meanwhile, Millie has become more and more attached to Hugh and the night of the party, he shows up at her house and they sleep together. Millie is happy until Hugh runs out the next morning, saying that it was a mistake. Millie is miserable, but she and Hugh keep bumping into one another. She ends up going to a book awards ceremony with Orla and decides that she's going to move to London to get away from Hester and Nat's love nest and to get over Hugh. She drinks a bottle of champagne after the ceremony and calls Hugh to tell him. The next morning, she gets a call from the front desk and Hugh is standing there. He tells her that he loves her.
Orla: Orla's life is not in a good place when the book begins. She had wanted to commit suicide because of her cheating husband, Giles, but he tells her that he's broken it off with his mistress. Orla wants to believe him, but is constantly worrying about it. She's also had a scathing review from a writer named Carson Christie. She decides that she has to change how she writes and so decides to write about Millie's life. Everything is going great for her for a while until Millie catches Giles at a restaurant with his mistress. Orla throws Giles out, and for once seems happy. At the awards ceremony, she meets Carson and they flirt and end up hooking up in the bathroom.
Hester: Hester is Millie's flatmate and best friend. She's in a committed relationship but her boyfriend, Nat, who's working to become a chef and lives in Glasgow. They very rarely see each other, which leads to her main problem in the book- Lucas Kemp. Lucas is the epitome of the one who got away to Hester. He broke her heart but she still cannot seem to get over him. When he moves back to Cornwall to start the kissogram business, she pushes Millie into applying for a job and is ridiculously tempted to get back together with him. Trying to prevent infidelity, she and Millie make the Celibet- if one of them has sex in Cornwall (so that if Hester goes to see Nat, it's perfectly acceptable), they have to pay the other 200 pounds. While Hester agrees to the bet, she is still, not so secretly, trying to get with Lucas. At Orla's party, she essentially throws herself at him, but he rejects her. She then drowns her sorrows in a bottle of champagne and passes out in Orla's garden. Meanwhile, Nat drives down to surprise her and ends up sleeping in the car. The next morning, he talks to Millie, who says that Hester hasn't come home yet, and then sees Hester come home with Con. Thinking that she's cheated on him, he stops talking to her. Desperate and in total despair, Hester tries to apologize, but finds out that Nat is going out with a woman named Anastasia. Lucas turns up at the apartment and they end up having sex. Hester is totally disappointed and relieved to find that Lucas was completely terrible in bed. This completely ends any infatuation she has with him and she resolves to get back with Nat. Nat moves back to Cornwall, and he and Hester get back together. When he starts working for Lucas in the new restaurant he's building, Lucas tells Nat about what happened, admitting that he was bad on purpose so that Hester would get over him. Nat tells Hester that he knows what happened, but he forgives her. They're ridiculously happy together, much to Millie's chagrin.
So in the end, all of our main ladies have a happy ending.
Discussion Questions
- If someone found your wallet or purse, what do you think they would assume about your life?
- Did the fact that Hester couldn't get over Lucas affect how you felt about her character?
- What did you think of Millie? She always seemed to be getting the "wrong end of the stick". Does this make her more endearing and/or easier to relate to?
- At the beginning of the book, Millie and Hester make a Celibet. Do you think that this made their lives more or less complicated, considering the fact that they both broke it?
- Would you allow someone to write about your life like Millie does? Would you have let Orla do all of that match-making?
- What did you think of the men in this book?
- How do you think Orla's book will turn out?
- How do you think all the main relationships (Millie/Hugh, Orla/Carson, and Hester/Nat) will turn out?
Great bloog post
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