The Knockoff

The Knockoff, by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza, caught my eye at the library the other day and I plowed through it very quickly. I both loved and hated this book. Overall - it was a cute, fun read. I would highly recommend it as a quick beach read. It's classic chick lit fluff - totally along the same lines as Helen Fielding, Marian Keyes or Jane Green (before she tried to get serious). Imogen Tate is a super-successful editor in chief of a glossy women's fashion magazine named, appropriately (if unimaginatively) enough, Glossy. She takes a 6 month medical leave to deal with breast cancer and returns to find her former assistant Eve has been rehired and promoted to... something kind of like her boss? But not? It's fuzzy. Anyway, Eve's directing all the online content for Glossy, which has, in 6 months, decided to stop printing and go totally online/be app-based. Also, Eve's basically a psychopath. The whole book is like a fashion mag remake of the classic movie All About Eve but it still feels original. Now, for the part I HATED. We're supposed to somehow believe that during the 6 months Imogen was out on leave, the world became super high tech. And poor, poor Imogen just can't keep up with any of it. Seriously? This woman is supposed to be like 5 years older than me and she can barely figure out how to send a text. How does that work? I mean, I know us Gen X'rs can't really compete with Millenials when it comes to staying up-to-the-second on the absolute latest tech trends (I say that as someone who just refuses to sign up for Snapchat. I just can't you guys. It's just too much) but for goodness sake, we were the original online generation. How is Imogen supposed to be believable at all?! I feel like she should have either been made to be 20 years older (or even 30 - seriously, this chick is less tech-literate than my mom and believe me, that's saying something) or maybe spent a few years out of the office instead of a few months (iPhones, Twitter and Instagram didn't just spring up overnight y'all) or even just had her be a little less helpless in the face of change. Her inability to figure out simple things that the rest of us have adapted to as they came out is infuriating and one wonders how someone so out of the loop in all things tech can possibly be believable as someone who can keep up with the ever changing world of fashion. It doesn't make any sense. Still, if you can get past the whole "Imogen is super stunted when it comes to those newfangled computin' machines" thing, it really is a great read. I might even buy this one to re-read when I need a fluffy little palate cleanser.