This was actually the first book I‘ve ever read written by Gemma Townley. I did not even know about her existence before I stumbled over a blog post by A Woman Reading who wrote about her. Gemma Townley is the sister of Sophie Kinsella and also writes Chick Lit. Since I love Sophie Kinsella books I definitely wanted to try out a book written by her sister. I chose Little White Lies because it is about a girl moving from a smaller city to London and tries to find her way through life. I liked the idea because I also just moved to London.When you first move to London, you have all these great expectations about how life in this metropolis would be like. You feel sophisticated and cosmopolitan. But as it turns out, even people living in London are just normal people like you and me. Living in the city is different from living in the country but both have their positive and negative sides.This is basically what happens to Natalie, the main character of the book. She moves to London and expects a fabulous life. She quit her job in advertising in her home town but the only job she can find in London is a working in a cloth store being bullied by her boss all the time. In the beginning she is not even going out. She spends her evenings alone in her tiny Notting Hill apartment dreaming of a better life. She told all her friends and family back home how great life in London is going to be and now they start asking about it. Feeling too proud to tell the truth, Natalie makes up stories about her great new job and her fantastic social and party life. While telling all these lies she forgets about the possibility that the people from home might come to London to be a part of this gorgeous new life she supposedly has. This leads to Natalie making up new lies trying to support her old ones. And it gets even worse when she falls in love with Simon while pretending to be someone else.But as the saying goes, lies don‘t travel far: First there is just one lie, then another one based on the first one and in the end it is a whole bunch of lies and a complete new story arises. It can become pretty hard to keep up with all the lies that are being told. Natalie has to remember all of them and everything new she tells has to fit into the whole imagined story.Even though I could not really understand why she was lying in several situations when it was so obvious to the reader that telling the truth would have been the less painful choice, I could still feel with her and it really made me laugh how she always found her way out of one lie through creating an even more absurd story…Throughout the whole book I was asking myself how Natalie would ever get out of the story she created. I do not want to give away the details for people who are interested in reading the book but I can say that I liked her way of dealing with things. What can be learned from this story is “that you have to make things happen, not wait for them to happen to you.”For this novel, Gemma Townley seemed to be inspired by the movie “Notting Hill” even though it is a complete different story. I could sense some similarities like the scene in the end when Natalie talks to Simon in his classroom in front of all his pupils as if she was one of them. This reminded me of the last scene in Notting Hill in which William Thacker pretends to be a journalists asking questions to movie star Anna Scott. The movie is one of my most favourite movies. I‘ve seen it so many times and it was nice being reminded of it by this great book. In the end I felt like going to Notting Hill and enjoying the little streets with the nice little houses and the cute little shops, maybe stopping by in the Travel Bookstore and at Tina T‘s… I really enjoyed reading Little White Lies and I don‘t quite understand why Gemma Townley isn‘t more popular. In my opinion she can definitely compete with her sister! I am going to read more of her books for sure…If you want to read more of my book reviews, have a look on my blog: http://booksaroundtheworld.wordpress.com
2 stelle e forse...mezza.Ho deciso che devo lasciare il chick lit da parte per un po', e l'ho deciso quando ero circa a 100 pagine dall'inizio di questo libro. Sono stata tentata di abbandonarlo diverse volte, ed è per questo che ho deciso di finirlo in pochi giorni (e anche perchè in biblioteca era già riprenotato, per cui l'alternativa era: finirlo a breve oppure riconsegnarlo e richiederne un'altra copia- cosa che non avrei più fatto, visto il mio scarso interesse verso il libro in questione-). Il punto è che l'ho trovato scialbetto. Scontato. Avevo letto che l'autrice era la sorella della Kinsella (che ultimamente pure mi sta deludendo- leggi la recensione di "Fermate gli sposi")e dal risvolto di copertina il libro sembrava promettent: la sostituzione di persona...può essere divertente, ho pensato... e può dare il via a tanti risvolti altrettanto divertenti. Ecco, sono i fatti che poi mi hanno delusa. L'incipit ci stà tutto. E' divertente. Poi però diventa banale, a mio parere. Dunque faccio passare qualche mese prima di leggere un nuovo chick lit, forse sono io a non essere nello spirito e nel momento giusto. Magari questa estate, sotto l'ombrellone... Consigliato? Nì, se vi piace la storia con la protagonista simpatica e il lieto fine fa per voi. Se cercate qualcosa di più non credo, ma giudicate voi...
It was an easy-read. I liked how Gemma Townley described the characters in this novel. I wouldn’t say it is a must-read. She had pretty well written a woman’s feelings, but I think she got a bit too much about it. I have to say, I liked the ending. A total fancy life dreaming girl completely turns into a superwoman and goes after her dreams. I still give this book a 3.0 since I got a li’l bored half way through and slightly impatient to know what happens with Natalie at the end, since it was too much of dragging. Enjoy!!
—Sirisha Muppala
This was my first time reading anything by Gemma Townley, but I'm a big fan of her sister, Sophie Kinsella (aka Madeleine Wickham). It was a fun, quick read, but also a very typical, predictable chick lit novel. The main character, Natalie Raglan, moves from Bath to London with hopes of starting a new, more glamorous life, but after a month still finds herself home alone every weekend. Then, one night in a fit of drunken boredom, she opens her flat's previous tenant's mail and the lying begins. Before she knows it she finds herself in the middle of a very typical chick lit dilemma from which she must dig her way out.
—Angie
Little White Lies: A Novel of Love and Good Intentions by Gemma Townley tells the story of Natalie Raglan, a 20-something just looking for adventure. When Natalie quits her job in Bath, England for a more exciting life in the big city of London, she realizes that sometimes adventure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.Natalie gets an apartment in London and a job at a high-end clothing shop in town. She doesn’t have much of a social life and is disappointed by her new life in the big city. Natalie’s new life is so pathetic that she doesn’t even get her own mail delivered to her house; she receives letters addressed to the previous tenant Cressida Langdon. After several boring nights in, Natalie goes out with co-workers, gets hammered and comes home and opens one of Cressida’s letters. Intrigued by the letter with a phone number for a man named Simon Rutherford, Natalie, in a drunken stupor calls the number.With good intentions to tell Simon who she really is, Natalie goes on a few dates. The right time to tell Simon never arises, so Natalie continues to live a fake life as Cressida Langdon, Reiki healer and socialite extraordinaire.Having just discovered Gemma Towney this summer, I’ve been excited to read more of her books, so I’ve been picking up as many as I can.I do love Gemma Townley’s writing, but Little White Lies wasn’t one of my favorites. The story had a slow start, but eventually picked up.I found the book a bit predictable, as the theme of ‘pretending to be someone else’ has definitely been done in books and movies before. It was easy to see where the story was going, but I still wanted to read on just to make sure.The book has a very happy ending with a few unexpected turns.Natalie is absolutely charming as a main character…she does some silly things and you will definitely laugh out loud while reading!
—Jessica Lawlor
