I was really looking forward to reading Single in the City by Michele Gorman, but actually found myself a bit disappointed. The main character is Hannah Cumming, a 26 year old American who decides she needs an adventure, to really live life, and one drunken night buys a plane ticket to London. Heading across the Pond without a job lined up or a place to live, Hannah experiences multiple difficulties while trying to adjust. Along the way, she sleeps with her married boss, finds a roommate solution with some half-naked Aussies, almost destroys her up and coming career as a party planner, and finally falls in love. The situations Hannah finds herself in are quite funny, and the one liners did make me smile throughout. Sounds like a fun and engaging chick lit novel.
So why was I disappointed? For starters, I like fast-paced books. I like the plot moving along and characters going from point A to point L in just a few pages. But with Single in the City, I think the plot was just a tad too fast. Multiple times I had to flip back pages to understand why the characters were doing and saying what they were doing and saying. The skipping around gave me a headache. Another aspect I didn’t like was when Hannah finally finds love, she almost seems to lose her own identity, and is willing to drop her new life she has created for this guy. The sense of individuality and confidence that I saw the heroine creating throughout the story suddenly vanishes. I did appreciate the humor and the descriptions of seeing London through an American’s eyes, but this is definitely not a favorite of mine. I would still recommend Single in the City for the humor and hopefully some can take an independent can-do attitude away from the Hannah’s story.
Rating: 3.5
**Note: This book has also been rewritten for the US launch. Please read Michele’s thought below.**
I’m very lucky to have had a year of reviews from so many readers, which allowed me to see what they liked and didn’t like about the book. For example several readers would have liked to see less drinking … since that wasn’t an important feature of the story I toned it down (though we do like a tipple over here!). Hannah is also a bit more of a rounded character now, and I’ve deepened the scene settings to give a stronger sense of place – it’s a bit more descriptive. The other change I made has to do with my evolution as a writer. I like an episodic style but that can sometimes go a bit fast. The book I wrote after Single in the City was less episodic, so I applied the adapted style to the rewrite too. I also took out the footnotes that explained American/British differences (they were aimed at British readers to explain some of our more peculiar habits).
Finally, I ‘translated’ it into American. This may sound easy but having written in English now for nearly 10 years, it was as slow process. Spelling was fairly straightforward thanks to spell check but the different words for things sometimes tripped me up. Luckily kind American friends helped me when I got stuck! English and American are definitely different dialects, something I only realised (the hard way!) when I moved to London.
