There are better things to do on a Girls Night In (Girls' Night In - Fiona Walker et al.)

Member Name: Clayeree

Product:	Girls' Night In - Fiona Walker et al.
Date:	14/09/09 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: In aid of charity

Disadvantages: Average and unmemorable stories

This collection of short stories was first published in 2000 in aid of the charity War Child. The list of authors contributing to this book reads like a Who's Who of chick lit:

Marian Keyes
Lisa Jewell
Wendy Holden
Amy Jenkins
Chris Manby
Candace Bushnell
Freya North
Cathy Kelly
Patricia Scanlan
Josie Lloyd
Jenny Colgan
Jane Green
Isabel Wolff
Fiona Walker

Chances are, if you're a twenty or thirty-something female who enjoys a good bit of chick lit, then you'll have read books by these authors before. I happen to have many books by this collection of authors sitting on my bookshelves and was therefore quite excited to discover that in this book I would be able to read stories by all of them. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed.

They say that it's harder to write a short story than a novel and this book provides evidence in support of that. One of the problems with collections of short stories is that you can read at least one story in a sitting and so you never become attached to or interested in the characters in the stories. The stories have to be exceptionally good to get the attention of the reader and the majority of stories in this book are not. Some of the stories are excellent, some are average but unfortunately a lot of them are rather pointless.

I won't summarise the plot of every story for you here because then there'll be no point in you reading the book but suffice it to say that the majority of the stories in this book are formulaic and average romance stories. Worth a particular mention are stories by Marian Keyes (involving an alien visiting Los Angeles), Jessica Adams (set on the London Underground) and Isabel Wolff (following a disastrous date).

There seemed to be a section in the middle of the book which contained several stories about women getting over the break up of their relationship which was pretty tiresome and the serious stories seemed to be grouped together as were the more lighthearted ones. Perhaps it would have been better if I had dipped in and out of this book rather than read it from cover to cover as I may have enjoyed it more.

Obviously this book is not intended to be taken too seriously and it makes good casual reading but sadly the stories are rather average and are not at all memorable.

Summary: OK but nothing special