Title: Warpaint
Author: JJ Maya
Publisher: Amazon Media EU
Pages: 198
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Willow Campbell, a
33-year-old makeup artist with no family and no friends but her colleagues and
her overbearing roommate, leaves hometown Glasgow in Ireland to go live with
her handsome new American husband Rick Delgado in New York. Rick has an
apartment in Manhattan, and though she has only known him for six weeks, what
could go wrong? The course of their love is charted in a little yellow book,
and Willow is full of hope.
Willow is sold on romance but it is a rude awakening that awaits her in New York. On arriving at the building, she realises that the fancy apartment of her dreams is nothing but a loft reeking of cigarettes and infested with ants. Worse, she finds in the bathroom scanty underwear and other evidence of a woman’s presence.
Rick’s
ex-girlfriend, Isabella, tells Willow that she is expecting Rick’s child.
Suddenly nothing is right. Desperate to escape the shame of having to be
deported back to the life she left behind, Willow must find herself a job while
proving to the authorities that she and Rick are happily married. It is the
only way that her Green card can be processed.
She finds herself
a job at a department store, D’Arcy, somehow breaking through the reserve of
the formidable owner, Gigi Gerson, known to her employees as Mrs G. She finds a
friend in Jackson, a fellow Irish who came over with the man of his dreams and
found despair. But it isn’t smooth sailing. Isabella is also employed at the same
department store and Willow finds herself thwarted by her at every step.
But Willow is too
angry with Rick to even attempt a compromise with him. Especially after she
buys a ticket to Glasgow and is convinced by Jackson to give her romance with
Rick another chance. She returns to the apartment, hoping to find Rick
heartbroken and finds Isabel and Rick doing things they shouldn’t.
But then Mrs G offers her a way out. If she can win the makeup competition, then she could
cement her place in America. But Isabella is offering stiff competition. Will she succeed?
This chick-lit book
was a fun read. I liked the idea of Willow making her own place in a foreign
city, moving on from the obscurity of her life in Glasgow to working as a
makeup artist in New York, totally unfazed by the disaster that her romance had
turned into.
Willow is the kind
of character who acts first, and thinks later. Most of the problems she suffers
are a result of her failure to think things through.
Music plays a huge
role in the book between songs playing in Rick’s home, Jackson’s home, or
D’Arcy’s, it seemed as if everything had a musical score which spoke to Willow.
One thing I really
liked was how New York felt like a character in itself. The author re-created
its crowds, its culture and its vibe. It piqued my desire to see this glorious
city for myself someday.
There were some
mistakes. A man called Cecil is qualified as the doorman of the apartment
building the second times his name is mentioned, not the first, leaving me to
wonder who he was.
Another thing that
I found irritating was the one tear and the two fat tears that were constantly
sliding down Willow’s cheeks. Rick had a single bead of sweat. Just as
annoying.
The whole romance
between Willow and Rick would have felt more real to us if we had seen their courtship
up close, but we are only part of the picture after
I’m not generally into
makeup, but in Willow’s hands, makeup is warpaint that gives people confidence
by helping them to hide their blemishes.
Willow made me
care about her even though I generally don’t care about the fashion and makeup
industry.
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