Review by Ann McDonald
Fresh from a four-month stint in rehab for her “alleged” shopping addiction, Babe Walker returns home to Bel Air, having made amends and confronted her past.
You are either a fan of this crazy stuff or you’re not. Some might find it humorous and funny but it just didn’t work for me. Walker is a good writer, she has talent and that’s obvious but the coarse language put me right off. You don’t need harsh language every other sentence to pull your story together and to draw your fans in but I do understand where she’s coming from, she’s painting life through the eyes of a young woman who has just come out of rehab and walks into scenarios which probably should have landed her back in therapy for a few more years but no, she decides to leave it all behind and head to Europe and hopes the stalker she picked up while in L.A. will stay behind too.
Paris is a rehash of what went awry in L.A. and parts are funny, in a sad way and then she decides to go to Greece. There she is waylaid (pun intended), loses all of her belongings, has a great shag and then leaves for Amsterdam. She considers her sexploit with Cal, the thief who stole her things, a fair exchange. Amsterdam brings back memories for her of when she was there with her father in 2002 and the memories of how fried your brain becomes after 48 hours of non-stop partying but she could not forget her stalker, who followed her to Paris to kill her. Oh joy! After spending the entire day smoking medical marijuana, she leaves the cafe, entitled ‘Family & Friends’ and is totally over all of her past lovers.
She ends up in the red-light district and spends hours talking with one of the hookers in her booth, settles her bill with her, meets up with a Russian girl and then heads off to Switzerland for more adventures. Ah joy plus joy! This little trip ends up with her dad rescuing her by helicopter who then proceeds to take her to London. There, she finds out that her father and his lover are going to be married. Then Charlie, an old flame, appears and she decides to go to New York with him. The two are happy and don’t make out for a while but when they do, we suddenly get a chapter on the size of acceptable penis sizes and no-goers.
The size of Charlie’s penis pretty much wraps up New York for Babe until she gets a job in Vogue. He heads off to China for business and Babe can’t make up her mind as to whether she wants to stay with him or go back to one of her exes and decides that the answer to all her problems, is shopping, where a very humorous exchange with a sales lady had me grinning from ear to ear. Okay, okay, Walker does have her moments. After deciding that one of her exes is the one for her, she suddenly turns back into psycho babe, manages to get fired from Vogue and thinks her stalker is back.
Friends make an intervention to try and bring her back to reality but it is long gone on an extended vacation. In fact, it may never come back. If you want to know who the stalker is and how all of this ends, pick up the book and read it yourself!
In stores May 1st
