Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
It was exactly like an action film with a funny heroine. The ending is the best and I was surprised to see how many details you have to take into consideration in a mission like this. Helen Fielding is either a genius detective, or must have made a lot of research.
Rules for Living by Olivia Joules1. Never panic. Stop, breathe, think.2. No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.3. Never change haircut or color before an important event.4. Nothing is either as bad or good as it seems.5. Do as you would be done by, e.g. thou shalt not kill.6. It is better to buy one expensive thing that you really like than several cheap ones that you only quite like.7. Hardly anything matters: if you get upset, ask yourself, "Does it rea...
this was another find in the cruise ship library, and it was one of the two I liked the most (the other was The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende.) This is definitely chick lit, with a sarcastic bite and a unique look at the world. Fielding's spoof of James Bond worked well for me -- I thought the characters were ultimately believable.
I liked it better than Cause Celeb and there were hints of the Bridget Jones type humor, but it still didn’t entertain me quite as much as Bridget Jones. One more book off the bookshelf from the “I’ve had it for years and really must finally read it” section.
Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestYou might know Helen Fielding as that other famous female British author that even Americans know about. Unlike the other other one, though, Fielding seems content to enjoy her fame in peace and quietude and doesn't hang around on the internet spouting nonsense and offensive bullshit. More power to her, I say. I hope she's living the high life on her heaping piles of well-deserved money. (Mark Darcy-- I swoon.)In case you didn't know, OL
In my opinion, approximately the first two thirds of the book lacked a solid plot and to complete this one you need to be incredibly patient because it starts falling together towards the end only. It's like a scrambled puzzle since the start and then very slowly, agonizingly slowly, we reach the part where it starts making sense.Also the thoughts of the main character Olivia are quite far fetched at times, like too far fetched. It's one thing to be over imaginative but another to be delusional....
The end of my three-book-long failed experiment in getting into chick lit. What an utter load of tripe: the story of a slim, beautiful, plucky and slim upstart English journalist who roams the world trailing along drooling hotel bellboys and sniffing out suspicious activity that eventually leads her not only to an underwater terrorist cave, not only to Osama Bin Fucking Laden, but to Hollywood where she FOILS A BOMB PLOT DURING THE ACADEMY AWARDS CEREMONY.If you're ok with that, go ahead and rea...
Damn. I never had so much fun without moving an inch. Bloody brilliant.Helen Fielding is finally back with a brand new heroine - Olivia Joules. Olivia is instantly likeable: down-to-earth, smart, self-made, and armed and ready to go with her own set of insecurities.As the title suggests, Olivia's seeming downfall is her overactive imagination. She is berated by her boss and friends equally for it, especially because, as a journalist, she's been known to botch up more than a few stories along the...
I read this novel twice in as many weeks, the first time zipping along sniffing the eccentric aromas of lovely silliness laced with adverbs about a pert blonde British freelance journalist with the essential ingredient for a M16 spy, an overactive imagination. Skimming along, oblivious of details, not looking for clues, I enjoyed what I presumed delightful nonsense although with the haunting suspicion of missing something.So I read it again. With foreknowledge of important characters like the cl...
Try very hard not to compare to Bridget Jones because that one was just in a world by itself (I love laughing until I cry and it's one of VERY FEW that were successfully told on screen - Renee Zellwegger is perfect for that part!). Okay, back to OJATOA (that title's too long to write!). * Title: Too long but it's sort of part of the humor* Hilariously NOT NOT NOT believable at all* The main character stereotypes people in the most ridiculous ways - you want to just slap her on the head - I suspe...
I was drawn to this book since I loved Bridget Jones, adore South Beach, and have been accused of having an overactive imgination, but I was sorely disappointed. I found it over-the-top and silly. It completely lacked the absurdity-meets-reality of the Bridget Jones books.It made me wonder if Fielding is one of those authors who should stick to writing only what they know.
Just remembered I wrote this review back in 2007:I was interested to see how a writer of such iconic books [Bridget Jones] would do outside her established area of success. Fielding obviously set out to make this book quite different: besides the occasionally omniscient third-person narration, Olivia is extremely unlike Bridget: focused on her career rather than finding love, and socially confident as well as secure in her looks. She's competent, skilled, and globally-minded. Instead of a romant...
Soooooo I will admit that this started a little slow for me, but thankfully I'm curious and wanted to know the outcome! I don't want to ruin anything but I will say it was worth the read and I loved it!
I remember reading a snarky review of this when it first came out, and I see that the average rating here at Goodreads isn’t all that high. Maybe those who dislike it are comparing it unfavourably with Bridget Jones’s Diary, which I know is very popular. I still haven’t read Bridget, and I thought I would start with Olivia and judge it on its own merits, because a friend highly recommended Olivia to me. I liked it. It’s a fun, entertaining read. Olivia is a fun character-—part plucky reporter, p...
‘Olivia Joules and the Over-Active Imagination’ is a stand-alone novel from ‘Bridget Jones’ author Helen Fielding.I have read and enjoyed both Bridget Jones books and Helen Fielding’s previous novel, ‘Cause Celeb’. However, I was a little reticent about reading this as I thought that after her success with Bridget Jones, Fielding would continue in the same vein but would find it hard to recreate another character as individual and captivating as Bridget. I was pleasantly surprised; this turned o...
What I liked about this book is that it was a surprise. I don't understand why some readers berated this book for not being Bridget Jones' Diary. It was written by the same author who obviously wanted to write about something else for a change. I also enjoyed it because I've always had a secret desire for espionage.I was expecting another chick-lit story, but was pleased to find myself reading a light-hearted comedic chick-lit spy thriller. It became hard to put down to prepare meals for my fami...
Character Olivia Joules is an aspiring features journalist who finds herself caught up in a Al-Queda style terrorist plot including the blowing up of a liner, a (foiled) plot to attack world bridges and (at the end) the booby trapping of the Oscars. Initially she seems to be imagining things – she is convinced that one of the characters is Osama Bin Laden – but in fact he does turn out to be a notorious terrorist.Harmless fun but very lightweight and clearly written to be filmed – and (despite w...
So I think I bought this because I remembered enjoying Bridget Jones' Diary , but upon checking my review, I didn't like that book much either.Ok, here we go. My review of what might possibly be the stupidest book I've ever read. Where do we start?1. Olivia - If you thought Bridget Jones was an unflattering, misogynistic portrayal of women, Olivia will blow you out of the water. SO MUCH TIME devoted to her being good looking, worrying about her figure etc. But the girl is dumber than a bag of r...
Wow - that was AWESOME!I finally got a book with an interesting female main character who is just enough ditzy and just enough smart to be entertaining. There's everything in that plot - hot guys, mysterious strangers, fashion, journalism, travel, adventure, just enough romance, just enough of a scare, underwater world, beaches, terrorists. How did Helen Fielding ever manager to mix all of that together and not be cheesy?I kept guessing and missing how the plot will evolve throughout entire book...
Last week I was having real reading trouble. Nothing on my TBR pile (either in paper books or e-books) inspired me, I was tired and run-down with a cold, I had next to no concentration, and what energy and concentration I did have I was using for work. I tried to read my current paperback, I tried a few things on my kindle, nothing was working. I needed something light and easy, and, well, I don’t usually go for light and easy, so there wasn’t anything of that type around.However on Wednesday I