Has anyone read Cat, Pip or Fen by Freya North?

[Worksitoutwithapencil]

Did you know their mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver?
I am reading Cat and this has been mentioned 5 times in the first chapter.

I am finding the book very irritating but I want to read it due to the Tour de France storyline. I am glad I am reading a paperback copy and not using my kindle cause I might feel the need to throw it across the room soon.

Just wanted a bit of a moan, I will try and restrain myself from having a full on rant about all the things that are annoying me. :)

She is possibly the most irritating author on the planet. I read them all for no reason at all - just to torture myself with their crapness.

I console myself that if she can get published, there's hope for us yet.

Years ago am sure I did on holiday and loathed them.

i quite liked the tour de france one.

the artist one and the bendy clown one were both shit though. the last one was unspeakably bad.

All that I remember from the TDF one was the number of times she felt the need to mention them pissing on their hands/shitting themselves.

yes I just read this in between cooking umpteen meals. Not the best.
I can read the most god awful tripe, but found this thoroughly boring.
I thik she wrote one about a sleep walking jewellery designer more recently that was a bit more readable though.

Have you got to the bit where we are told that Cat is now going to have a terrible moment/day, in a stepping outside of the story/ speaking as author to reader mechanic? Really irritating and arch.

That's it, pier, I was trying to remember what it was about her style that irritated me so much. It's that twee speaking as author shite.

I think I read the one where the sisters actually go to Denver to find their mother, and it turns out she didn't marry a cowboy after all.

It was really bad!

Did you notice the sisters are quirky and cutesy and don't wear any makeup except for a lick of lipgloss and have lemon smelling hair and flippy skirts?

And then have really badly written, really dirty grubby sex?

FN lost it aftr Chloe IMO (2nd book IIRC) (quirky,lemons, etc had paintings talking to each other )

I didn't mind the one where the lemony woman goes to Yorkshire and has porny sex with the teacher too much.But FN is to chick lit what Jodi Picoult is to legal-trauma. One character who namechanges through 345 books (really in JP's case, seems like in FN's case)

Whenever I see a bike rider in lycra I think about the bananas in the shorts.

Yep. Flirty dress, flippy skirt. Slick of lipgloss, flick of mascara.
It's like they're written by that computer ape.

So who can recommend some good trash?
Am hankering for the new, new Jilly Cooper.
(As every new chick lit author is claimed to be!)
Like some Marion Keyes, though not the most recent brightest star one,
Any ideas?

Some Lisa Jewell. (Vince and Joy) Erm, that's it. so,one Lisa Jewell.

Some Marian Keyes. (Be very afraid when she doesn't do the Oirish thing though because they are dreadful)

Actually, the best are probably Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby.

What's that woman who sets things in France? Some of them are OK.

Yeah,Chloe was the paintings one. She met Sally (book 1)at her wedding reception where she was washing pots (hate that all of them meeting each other in different books thing as well.)

I like Fiona Walker (Jilly Mark Two) for trash. Good door-stoppers, too.

Yes SuePB, I liked Fiona Walker, the last one was rather satisfyingly long,with jilly puns, want a new one. I saw Amazon advertising a new Penny Vincenzi, but on the cover it seemed to say it was her first one, confusing...
Agree with Bucharest, Marion is only good when writing Oirish!

The talking as an author is what is annoying me so much. I am only a few chapters in and almost every character has had a conversation in their head with the author who is asking them questions and challenging them. Feels like a lazy was of introducing people, filling us in on their background and explaining their feelings.

I have read Fen in the past and remember men getting physically visibly excited just at the sight of her and now a man in his 30s has just had a 'stirring in the groin' upon seeing Cat. Do men really get this kind of reaction just from seeing a pretty girl? According to DH it is the kind of thing that does not happen to men when they are over 15.

I was several years ago that I read Fen and the only thing I can remember apart from the extreme reactions that men had to her is that the storyline was 'I fancy 2 men, don't know which one to choose I have to go for a weekend away and think about it' then repeat several times. Can't remember who she actually went for in the end and didn't care by then.

I don't know how these books managed to get published. Normally I would give up on a book that annoyed me this much but I am a big cycling fan and the first grand tour of the year in may still feels a long way away, I was hoping this book would contain some of the excitement that I am currently missing.

Oh dear I seem to have broken my intention not to rant

I keep getting Penny V from the library by mistake - they will keep re-designing the covers and I think I haven't read them.

I have a shameful soft spot for the Regency trash - Julia Quinn and the like.

Agree Fiona Walker very good for chick lit, her last few have been very Jilly Cooper ish but her earlier ones are very good as well.

Love Suepoibly! genius, why don't you write one for us?

i think Wendy Holden ghost wrote for Tar P-Ts old Sunday Times column?

I quite liked Cat . Pip and Fen.....less so.

And I liked Chloe as well. I thought it was a nice concept.

I didn't mind the Pip etc books but her other ones I just could not get in to.