Books Read: Stella Newman - Leftovers

According to a magazine, Susie is a ‘Leftover’ – a post Bridget-Jones 30 something who has neither her dream man, job, nor home. She doesn’t even own six matching dinner plates.

According to her friend Rebecca, Susie needs to get over her ex, Jake, start online dating – or at least stop being so rude to every guy who tries to chat her up.

But Susie’s got a plan. If she can just make it the 307 days till her promotion and bonus, she can finally quit and pursue her dream career in food, then surely everything else will fall into place. If only her love life wasn’t so complicated…

I actually finished Leftovers by Stella Newman a few weeks ago but completely forgot to write the review, so apologies to SteIla and her publishers Avon, for the lateness of this review! 

When she completes a magazine quiz Susie Rosen discovers that she's a 'leftover' and it would certainly appear that's the way her life has turned out, she's thirty-four and single again after splitting with her ex Jake, and stuck in a job working for a marketing company that she doesn't enjoy.  But Susie has a plan, she just has to make it until Christmas till her promised promotion and bonus and then she can make her escape and do what she really wants... make a career for herself in the food industry.  But if only things were quite as simple...

If I'm honest this book was a bit of a slow simmer for me as it took a while to get going but once it did I found myself laughing at the situations that Susie gets herself into it.  And I have to confess I even found myself drooling over some of the food references in the book, especially her grandmother's pasta dishes who had a receipe suitable for any mood, and I'm not a lover of Pasta!

One of the things I really liked about this book were characters that you could relate to, after all how many of us have friends that we don't see from one day to the next when they're in the throes of a new relationship like Dalia, and how many of us have had friends like Rebecca constantly trying to set us up on dates.  And as for Susie, she could be any one of us thirty-plus-year-old singletons...

If you're looking for a book with humour and delightful characters then you can't go far wrong than picking up a copy of Leftovers... but be warned do NOT read when you are hungry...