Review: Irresistible
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 29, 2013
Mia, aged sixteen and nervous, is interviewing for a summer job in a stately home hotel in Kent. She's not sure how to cope with distinguished guests (curtsey?) or cook anything but one spaghetti recipe, but how hard can cleaning work be? A distractingly good-looking young man is illicitly sipping vintage port with another girl, and she gets fired. He doesn't, but then, he lives at Radleigh Castle.Jamie Foxx is rich and Mia gets hired as a waitress but keeps meeting the underachieving lad, who has a fine opinion of himself. Dan, a new waiter, is pretty nice by contrast and has the same travel bug as Mia; he takes her for a picnic and tells her jokes. Jamie however likes wrecking people's lives, and his confident girlfriend Cleo doesn't spend much time with him. Cleo gives Mia champagne after her work one evening and brings her to chat with Jamie and their pals, most of whom find Jamie irresistible and a natural leader. But they're just drunken pranksters. If only Mia didn't feel so drawn to Jamie....Remember sixteen, when you were nervous, easily made to feel a fool, scared of romance and breakups, learning fast about all the elements of life they don't teach in school? Mia's story shows it to a T. Her insecurity amid slightly older people with money and swagger, is resonant of 'Gatsby', or Kate Holmquist's 'The Glass Room'. "I want her to like me," Mia says. She has a caring mother and stepfather, dislikes deceiving them and her best pal and has further exams looming. And dreadfully, her one past boyfriend took a naked picture of her and circulated it.Liz Bankes, from London, gives us a young adult book about glamour and embarrassment and trying to fit in with a crowd. Young people will learn and identify with Mia and her good friends; adults will recall their teens and wish they'd known then what they know now. In any catering or hospitality family though, the teenagers are made to take summer work in the business, to learn the trade and deal with customers. This would have done Jamie a lot of good. IRRESISTIBLE is the author's first book, with an assured style and fine descriptions, and I look forward to reading many more.