Well this book was pretty much what I expected from the title. 50% shopping and 50% trashy chick-lit. Saying that though, it was well written and the plot was quite unlike anything I’ve read before.

The book has three main characters, Emily, Sandie and Grazia, although we are introduced to Emily first so it seems like the story revolves around her. She’s been dumped by her husband and left jobless and holding the baby. She’s sitting in a cafe when she is approached by Grazia, the head of a ‘secret shopping’ company that goes undercover to spy on shop assistants and waitresses to find bad customer service. Grazia is a recently widowed lady, running out of money due to her artist-husband’s lack of planning for the future. She also recruits Sandie who’s just been fired from her job after being set up for stealing money by her super-catty colleague.

After the initial introductions, the storyline was pretty predictable for this kind of book, Emily falls for a charming guy called Will, but then messes it all up and thinks she’s lost him for good. But with help from Sandie and Grazia, of course things turn out happily ever after in the end. Similar predictability for Sandie and Grazia, although their stories don’t seem quite as fully developed as Emily’s. This kind of put me off because we were switching between three narrators for the story, but two of them seemed more like a side-show than the main story.

I did find the book quite entertaining and it was definitely an easy read, but when I compare it to some of the books I’ve read recently, it just didn’t draw me in in quite the same way.