Book Review: Sapphire by Katie Price

Sapphire Jones runs a successful hen weekends business, but ironically she's pretty unlucky in love herself. She's already had 1 failed marriage, and her latest fling with Jay seems to be getting too serious for Sapphire's liking.

Things start to look up for Sapphire when she gets to host a celebrity hen-night but an unwelcome face makes a return, and ends up introducing Sapphire to some unsavoury people she can't seem to get rid of.

Add that to the fact that things aren't going well with Jay, her friendships with Jazz and Sam her best mates are waning and her mum is having some serious problems too. How is Sapphire going to solve all her problems, and has she let love slip away when she least wanted it to?

Now, let me start by saying that I'm not really a Katie Price fan, so you might be wondering what I'm doing reading one of her books. Well, I recently read the debut novel of Rebecca Farnworth called Valentine who is the ghost-writer for Katie Price and I loved it, so  I decided I'd give this one a go too! Katie Price gives the idea for the story to Rebecca, and then she turns it into the novel that we all read, so really it is a Farnworth book, not a Price one despite her name in rather large lettering on the cover! I wonder how many people think that Katie sits and writes these books herself?!  The pretty red cover is quite striking to be honest, but I have to say it's not a book I would readily read in public view, sorry Katie!

The book is pretty much what you would expect from the storyline and the "author". It focusses on a single woman whose ex-husband has cheated on her so she's wary of forming any more close relationships with men (is Katie trying to tell us something?). The main character of Sapphire is actually fairly likeable, she isn't too over-the-top and for the most part she is a character that the reader will care about and consequently you'll want to read the book to find out what will happen to her. I think you can see hints of Katie in Sapphire, and I wonder whether she meant to hint at things in her personal life through this book.

There were a lot of twists in the story and I didn't see a lot of them coming, so I have to give credit to Katie and Rebecca for this. There were some quite sinister scenes in the book that I didn't expect for a book like this, but they did add a little something extra to it that stopped it being a generic happy-go-lucky Chick-lit book. Yes, it is very predictable and you can see how things are going to turn out within the first few chapters but that doesn't stop you enjoying the journey of getting there and the turns along the way too.

The writing style is very reader-friendly, and the third person narrative allows the reader to get right into the story of Sapphire very well, and therefore to get involved with her character. However, I don't recall any scenes that didn't have Sapphire in which is somewhat unusual for a third person narrative but it didn't feel too Sapphire heavy which is due to the good writing. It's set in Brighton, somewhere I haven't visited but I could visual all the places mentioned, they were written in good detail and I can imagine Katie had some input in describing some of her favourite Brighton haunts.

I did enjoy the book, but I dare say that's because of Rebecca Farnworth's enjoyable writing style, although the plot wasn't that bad really! Yes it's predictable regarding the ending, but the plot twists did keep it interesting. If it gets people reading, it's got to be a good thing but I do sort of resent Katie putting her name to the book and acting like she's written it when its Rebecca Farnworth who sat down and put together the whole story in words. I know authors get annoyed when they see Katie Price's novels at the top of the best-seller charts but they seem to give women what they want - a good story, a likeable leading lady, hunky men and a dash of sex as well. It's very light-hearted easy reading, but delivers on what you'd expect. Enjoyable.

Rating: 4/5