http://www.anurseandabook.com/2015/01/the-knockoff-by-lucy-sykes-and-jo-piazza.html

This book started out slow. I understand that the authors were trying to make the point that the heroine, Imogen, is supposed to be so old and outdated (she was 42!!! If you didn't know that, you would have thought she was 85 or slightly slow) that she is in danger of becoming irrelevant. But the initial build up for this was so over the top that it was embarrassing. It's hard to

Oh, Imogen......

believe that a 42 year old editor in chief of a national fashion magazine (who also has a pre-teen daughter) has never been on Twitter, Instagram, and never had an app or a website for her popular magazine. Honestly, my 70 year old retired father has a new Ipad and Apple TV, and is quite adept with both. The lack of ANY tech awareness by Imogen was a little hard to swallow.

She didn't know how to use her computer or really even check her email. She keeps lamenting the loss of her Blackberry (the iPhone is beyond her too), but all it did was make me wonder what the hell she was doing on it? They make it seem like composing an email was completely beyond her.

About a quarter of the way in, the story started to pick up. There definitely is a gap between the emerging workforce of Millennials and the Gen X'ers, and that was an interesting storyline. In the beginning, Imogen seemed to believe the whole new workforce would be unwelcoming to her. But as the story progressed, she found that many of the younger crowd were respectful of what she brought to the table, and wanted to help her learn to adapt. Eve wasn't horrible because she was a Millennial, Eve was just a horrible person.

Don't go to Harvard Business School

Eve was really kind of a one note character. And the one note was not good. Sometimes, it's nice when the villain has a little more backstory of what made them morph into evil, but there wasn't that detail here - she went away to Harvard Business school a crying mouse, and came back as evil wrapped in a bandage dress.

There were two sideswipes of the story that seemed unnecessary, one was the kiss between Imogen and Eve's fiance (Imogen's ex-boyfriend). I kept thinking Eve would find out, her husband would find out, or there would be some later development, but there wasn't. It was just nothing. And it's hard to believe that Imogen would join him for a drink, this made no sense, given what we knew about her character.

The second was the phantom breast pain. I thought it was a tool to make Imogen consider quitting, or changing jobs, a way to remind her what was most important in her life. But it was really just an aside, and wasn't mentioned again.

But all in all, this was a very enjoyable read and I liked Imogen a lot as a character. There were quite a few places where I laughed out loud, and I applaud Imogen's restraint when she discovered the secret of "Candy Cool", because I might have been tempted to reach out and touch someone in Herve Lager.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Doubleday for this ARC and the chance to review "The Knockoff".

Current Goodreads rating 3.71

The Knockoff - Likewise Book Reviews

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