Azur Like It [Mass Market Paperback]

I'm sorry to say that if a book can't grip you in the first few pages, or at least chapter one, it's pretty difficult to motivate onself to continue. I just hope your next book is a saving grace, as I'm still an ardent fan and will always cherish the past glee your books have provided. I look forward to the next one...

Kate Clegg toils at her thankless job at the Slackmucklewaite Mercury (known as the "Mockery") in a small North-English town. She yearns to escape to a real journalism job, but has to be content with small-town stuff for the time being. Things go downhill when megamogul Peter Hardstone buys the Mockery and wrecks what little worth it had. Gone are Kate's dreams of covering the Cannes Film Festival -- all she gets to do is interview witchy reality-TV starlet Champagne D'Vyne.

That all changes when Kate encounters Nat Hardstone, the hunky son of her boss. Kate is swept off her feet by the sexy Nat's advances, and most of all by his willingness to get her sent to the Cannes Film Festival. She doesn't notice his shady, manipulative behavior, and ends up in France by herself, abandoned and friendless. But with some friends to help out, she might just salvage her trip...

"Azur Like It" is strictly by the numbers chick lit, with a slightly different setting. But a boring plot set in southern France is still boring. Holden tries to spice it all up to make it fun and delicious, but without a solid plotline or much of an idea where it's all going.

Holden manages some uproarious kitsch moments, like the description of the Hardstone mansion's "Baroque'n'Roll" interior decoration. But those are offset by the boring, like much of Kate's horrible first days in France. Not to mention the embarrassing: It's hard not to wince when we're treated to a cringeworthy sex scene in a restaurant, involving Nat's big toe.

What's more, "Azur Like It" is hideously predictable. It's obvious early on just what a creep Nat is, and that Kate will end up in more trouble if she goes along with him. And her constant parade of misery -- getting her jacket burned off right before the festival -- gets tired after a while.

Kate is so blindingly naive and trusting that you may want to club her. Her Goth-y pal Darren is far more likable, and the caricatures -- the flamboyant decorator, the snotty trophy wife -- are the most fun, even if they rarely are more than cardboard cutouts. The most entertaining is certainly Champagne, a horrendously rude, untalented starlet who aspires to be the next Bond girl.

Take your average chick-lit book, cut out the plot, add kitsch and an exotic setting, and you have "Azur Like It." It's pretty at the start, but degenerates into a mass of cliches and purple ceilings.