Just as in criminal trials where prior convictions of the accused are inadmissible so as not to prejudice the jury, perhaps prior successes of authors should be ignored in reviews of their subsequent books. However, in the following review of Honeymoon by Amy Jenkins, creator of the hit TV series `This Life', the author's past precedes her. Being a `This Life' fan, I was expecting a gritty, confronting and fundamentally entertaining novel. Instead, Honeymoon is somewhat bitsy, silly and predictable - but it is still entertaining. Honeymoon is about a fairly neurotic girl (called Honey Moon) who marries a Mr Nice while still besotted by a Mr Fantasy with whom she once spent a fairy tale night. Predictably, Honey reunites with this boy on their respective honeymoons, resulting in a racy mix of soapie drama, sloppy confessions and slapstick fun. It's like a comedy of errors, except that Honey doesn't laugh much. She is in personal turmoil. When she says `I was just wishing I didn't have to be so exhaustingly inside myself the whole time', you can't help but agree. Honey's grating self-obsession could have been fatal, but Amy Jenkins manages to keep the reader's sympathies intact with her accessible stream-of-consciousness style and quirky insights. Already a bestseller in the UK, this book is sure to be popular here too.

Michelle Atkins is contract and copyright coordinator at Nelson Thomson Learning. 

C. 2000 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors

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