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A review by 00leah00
Simply the Best by Karin Kallmaker
4.0
“Simply the Best” by Karin Kallmaker is tagged as a romance but honestly, while I did enjoy the romance that’s here, it mostly felt like women’s fiction. There’s a lot going on that isn’t connected to the romance and those things take up a lot of pages. I wanted to throw that out there in case anyone is skimming these reviews for a romance. Saying that, I liked this book, quite a bit actually. It’s not perfect in that it’s overly long and I found myself skimming certain parts. But I’ll get into that more later.
Alice Cabot is in trouble with her editor for getting caught on camera calling a congressman a douchebag. She’s a science journalist and as punishment is assigned a style series on Simply the Best, a Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop-like conglomerate. She’s 40 and because of Covid, she’s become somewhat depressed and bitter with the world. Alice is a New Yorker through and through and isn’t looking forward to spending time in Los Angeles, especially for this piece.
Pepper Addington is 27 and recently been promoted personal assistant to Helene Jolie, the brains behind Simply the Best. Helene doesn’t like journalists and Pepper’s job is to help Alice and get her in and out of Helene’s hair as quickly and painlessly as possible. Pepper is a mostly happy and optimistic person. I want to say she see’s the world through rose colored glasses but I’m not sure if that’s right or not. She definitely wants to see and believe the best in those around her.
Alice and Pepper have an attraction to one another but this is a slow burn and it takes a while for things to happen. They don’t actually meet until after 20% so there’s a lot of getting to know them before that happens. I liked their spark and how their personalities complemented one another. However, I would’ve liked more scenes of them together and more depth to their emotional connection. It felt like we got to know them mostly when they were on their own or with their friends/family and not so much as them together.
As I said above, there’s a lot going on in this. There’s a lot of talk about social issues, the pandemic, workplace politics. Some of it is just gets lightly hit upon and some of it Kallmaker goes into a lot more depth. I didn’t mind this for the most part. But it did take away from the romance and became the center piece.
Kallmaker writes a lot of details in her books and this is full of them. I usually love details but there was a lot of details about the surroundings and buildings that I didn’t really need. This led me to skim parts of chapters, so not important parts, just descriptive bits that I, as a reader, don’t need. As an example, Simply the Best headquarters is described in detail from both Pepper and Alice. STB stores are also detailed several times so it gets long and repetitive. People that value a lot of details will really enjoy this one a lot.
Overall, I enjoyed “Simply the Best” and it left me feeling hopeful for Alice and Pepper’s future.
I received an ARC from Bella Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Alice Cabot is in trouble with her editor for getting caught on camera calling a congressman a douchebag. She’s a science journalist and as punishment is assigned a style series on Simply the Best, a Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop-like conglomerate. She’s 40 and because of Covid, she’s become somewhat depressed and bitter with the world. Alice is a New Yorker through and through and isn’t looking forward to spending time in Los Angeles, especially for this piece.
Pepper Addington is 27 and recently been promoted personal assistant to Helene Jolie, the brains behind Simply the Best. Helene doesn’t like journalists and Pepper’s job is to help Alice and get her in and out of Helene’s hair as quickly and painlessly as possible. Pepper is a mostly happy and optimistic person. I want to say she see’s the world through rose colored glasses but I’m not sure if that’s right or not. She definitely wants to see and believe the best in those around her.
Alice and Pepper have an attraction to one another but this is a slow burn and it takes a while for things to happen. They don’t actually meet until after 20% so there’s a lot of getting to know them before that happens. I liked their spark and how their personalities complemented one another. However, I would’ve liked more scenes of them together and more depth to their emotional connection. It felt like we got to know them mostly when they were on their own or with their friends/family and not so much as them together.
As I said above, there’s a lot going on in this. There’s a lot of talk about social issues, the pandemic, workplace politics. Some of it is just gets lightly hit upon and some of it Kallmaker goes into a lot more depth. I didn’t mind this for the most part. But it did take away from the romance and became the center piece.
Kallmaker writes a lot of details in her books and this is full of them. I usually love details but there was a lot of details about the surroundings and buildings that I didn’t really need. This led me to skim parts of chapters, so not important parts, just descriptive bits that I, as a reader, don’t need. As an example, Simply the Best headquarters is described in detail from both Pepper and Alice. STB stores are also detailed several times so it gets long and repetitive. People that value a lot of details will really enjoy this one a lot.
Overall, I enjoyed “Simply the Best” and it left me feeling hopeful for Alice and Pepper’s future.
I received an ARC from Bella Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.