Glorious chick flick lit. ( )

Being a grownup is hard. When our older two children went off to college, we told them that we didn't expect them to know what they wanted to do with their lives at 18. As the oldest moves into the real world, we still don't expect him to know where his path is. Obviously his first job (yay for a fully employed kid!) is the first step on his path but there's no reason to expect that he knows with any certainty where that path will ultimately lead. Even people who have long had a very good idea of what they want to do (child #2 here) don't know how the path will get them where they want to go. And it's the stops along the way to a goal that shape a person, that make them who they are, and if they're lucky, turn them into adults. Lauren Berry's novel, Living the Dream, entertainingly details the life detour main character Emma has to make as she works toward her ultimate goal of being a writer.

Emma works at an advertising agency where she is quite good at her job as a "creative" but is often unrecognized and certainly underpaid and unfulfilled. What she really wants is to be a writer. From her best friend Clementine's perspective, Emma's life looks pretty good as after a year abroad doing an intensive and well-respected but very expensive graduate program, Clem has had to move back into her mother's house and work as a bartender while she waits impatiently to be discovered as the talented screenwriter she is. Neither Em nor Clem envisioned her adult life looking the way it is and both feel stuck waiting for their dreams to come true.

This is a funny and delightful look at the lives of young women in London figuring themselves and their lives out. Emma is struggling personally and professionally, her one glimmer of professional happiness being in the blog she writes on the side, her outlet for truth. Otherwise she is swamped in the tediousness of office life and in feeling like a sellout helping advertise companies in whom she doesn't believe. Clem doesn't want to sell out to the corporate world but she isn't moving forward any faster than Emma and she's always broke to boot. Both Em and Clem want to find happiness and fulfillment, which they try to do through a lot of boozy nights out, dating disasters, and kvetching to each other and their assorted friends but it takes actual movement and risk for anything to actually change in their lives.

Berry has written a terrifically entertaining novel about launching into adulthood, chasing dreams, and finding yourself. Emma is a complete delight and the cast of secondary characters around her are compelling and real feeling. Clem is billed as a second main character but she really plays second fiddle to Emma in the novel. There is certainly a lot of true to life angst here but the humor balances it out nicely so the reader never feels as if she's wallowing with the characters. As a mother of young adults, this novel does make me sad to think so many newly minted grownups are so unhappy and stuck in their lives, but it also gives me hope that finding the right path will happen, things will look brighter, and not everything along the way will be terrible. This quirky coming of age novel should appeal to others who remember their twenties with a shudder and a sigh of relief that they are through that fraught time and by those living through it who want to see themselves in these fun-loving but scared to make a move reflections of themselves. ( )

The premise sounded good but too cutesy for my tastes. This book just did not deliver for me. I never got fully involved in the story line and struggled to finish this one. ( )

Broke twenty somethings struggle to find themselves, happiness, and some money in modern day London. Clementine has just recently returned from a year of film school in America. Unfortunately she is stuck living in her parents house and forced to face mounting debt. In order to make ends meet and pay bills she takes a job bartending until she can sell some of her screenplays. Her best friend, Emma is stuck in a monotonous job at a corporate advertising firm. It's slowly sapping her of her creativity, passion, and zest for life. Together they face one night stands, binge drinking, aging parents, unhappy jobs, and a quest to find a better life. Certainly not ground breaking but the writing was fresh and witty which made reading this a breeze. For fans of Sex in the City, Bridget Jones' Diary, and other coming of age novels. ( )

Emma and Clementine are 20 somethings, trying to make their way into adult life in London. Emma works in a job she despises in a advertising firm, wishing she didn't have to sell her soul to make a living and that she could be more creative (like she can be on her blog). Clem just got back from New York, is a screenwriter with great potential, but no contacts to get started or nickels/shillings to rub together. Emma lives with a dude (not her boyfriend), while Clem has to move back home, and return to her hostessing/bartending job to make ends meet. Meanwhile, they drink.... and they drink.... and they drink... sometimes to the point of blacking out, or just humiliating themselves. Their mutual friend, Yasmin, has it all together, great job, fiancé (who our girls don't like) is presented as a foil character, showing off what Emma and Clem don't have.

I found this book to be very sad. I have kids in their 20s, and it's depressing to me to see how empty Emma and Clem's lives seem to be, and just how much they drink as a way of coping. It's also sad to see how hard life can be for people in their 20s, how much we as an older generation expect them to just get themselves together and make a life without supporting them, mentoring them, providing them opportunities. I'm sure my age influences my feelings about this book, and I imagine that other 20 somethings will find it fun and funny. And I'm glad that things eventually worked out for both Emma and Clem, in the end. ( )