Going La La [Paperback]

Going La La is a contemporary romance that benefits from its Los Angeles locale, setting it apart from other recently published London-based "chick-lit" and "city-lit" titles. Frankie is 29, happy in her job and thinks she might be about to get married. However, within the space of a week she loses both her job and her potential fiancé and is on a plane, running away to her best friend Rita, who is trying to make it as an actress in LA. Alexandra Potter revels in seeing LA and the Californian lifestyle through Frankie's naïve eyes, detailing the excesses and the absurdities of this image-conscious, sun-blessed, car-driven culture. Through Rita's somewhat nefarious contacts, she and Frankie experience an LA of parties and glamour that many a British visitor to LA could only dream of. However, Potter hams these up to such an extent that they appear as film scenes in their own right, with farcical swimming pool set pieces, obligatory scantily clad women and a whiff of Class A drugs.

Potter has written a classic romance that manages to twist and turn to leave the reader guessing at Frankie's happiness until the very end and has created in her hero and heroine two believable and yet off-kilter characters. Reilly, the love interest, appears as both the uncouth, cowboy-hat-wearing American of stereotype and yet also as the charming gentleman who has experienced pain and needs some love. Frankie, though she has a worrying tendency to relate all her LA experiences to the last two years of her life, (house parties are only comparable to those she went to with her ex-boyfriend, the smarmy Hugh, which feels unrealistic for a 29-year-old, but is perhaps symptomatic of her misguided devotion to her ex), is a sympathetic character and yet beautiful and flighty enough to be the star of her own story.

Going La La offers a dream away from everyday life, where men are Cary-Grant-cum-Marlboro man lookalikes and women are allowed to be swept off their kitten-heeled feet (while also becoming leather-trouser-wearing independent sex-bombs). Frankie rejects drab and oh-so-British-London and her equally drab and oh-so-British boyfriend, embracing sunny Los Angeles and Reilly with his "long, lazy smile"--something we'd all like to do, at least for one day, as we read this and smile on a cold, rainy Sunday morning. --Olivia Dickinson

'Nobody does it quite like Alexandra Potter' -- Daily Mirror 'The perfect reading romcom' -- Daily Mail on ME AND MR DARCY 'Fantastically funny' -- Elle on ME AND MR DARCY Sharply written, pacey and funny...pure self-indulgence' -- The Times on BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR 'Feel-good fiction full of unexpected twists and turns' -- OK! 'A touching, funny love-story' -- Company 'Always perceptive, often funny, never dull' -- Heat --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Of course Frankie is happy. Happy with her estate agent boyfriend Hugh, happy that her career is finally going somewhere. Happy with her flat and her two cats, Fred and Ginger. Until Hugh tells her that he's not. Happy that is. He needs space. Space that apparently Frankie is not allowed to fill. Of course Frankie is unhappy. So unhappy that when she's fired from her job, it seems to fit in with the rest of her life falling apart. So unhappy that she decides to quit her life in London and go to L.A.. To the land where her best friend Rita is trying to make it as an actress, and Dorian is living upstairs and is free to amuse her whenever she needs a friend. And finally there even seems to be space in her thoughts for Reilly, a contemporary version of the classic marlboro man. Who might, just might, be the one to make her happy again.

Alexandra Potter was brought up in Yorkshire, but now lives in London. She used to be a freelance sub-editor and features writer for various women’s magazines, until one she decided to actually sit down and write ‘that’ book she was always going on about. Life was never the same again. An agent and a book deal followed and ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’ was published by Fourth Estate in April in 2000. Her second novel, ‘Going La La’, was published in March 2001.