Review: Apocalipstick by Sue Margolis

If the title didn't give it away, the hot pink cover certainly would. This is chick lit with no apologies. Unfortunately it is as superficial as the critics of the genre contend all chick lit is. It opens with single girl Rebecca stopped in traffic, busily applying make-up, and not noticing that traffic has freed up, earning her a honk and nasty look from the good looking jerk driving behind her. Cut to Rebecca discovering that she has been moved from her desk at the heart of the newsroom to a corner to make room for new golden boy Max, who turns out to be the good looking jerk from the morning commute. You had to see that one coming, right?! But Rebecca isn't obsessed with dating (no, we are given her goofy grandmother for that trope). She's a reporter who wants to cover more than the beauty column on which she's currently filling in as a freelancer. She wants to be a serious investigative reporter. As such, she's going to chase down the story of a new wrinkle cream that contains a secret ingredient which makes it really and truly work, but could also cause serious, irreparable harm to the women who use it. Seriously. Over the top?!

In the meantime, her personal life gets a boost from the delicious Max, who seems quite keen on her. Well, he's at least as keen on her as he is on the gorgeous television presenter with whom he's working on an expose or so Rebecca thinks. And can our heroine see that he's one of the good guys who really does like her? Nope. She has to jump to conclusions and fly off the handle and just generally act like a complete dingbat of a teenager. And yet this is a woman who is supposedly reasonably mature and capable of serious investigative reporting. I didn't much buy it. In addition to the outrageously cliched plot and main characters, the secondary characters are ridiculous caricatures. Occasionally they inspired laughs but for the most part, they were as flighty and silly as Rebecca herself.

Rebecca misreads almost everyone around her and it is sheer luck that she hasn't permanently stuffed up her personal life, career, and everything else. This was the lightest of light reads, although it had some fairly overwrought sex scenes to balance out the fluff. I probably could have found a more fulfilling way to spend my reading time but for a book when you don't want to have to think at all, this was just fine.