Guest Book Review and Giveaway: Styling Wellywood

By Jacqueline Friedland

**Giveaway is now closed**

How do you handle an upsetting situation? Do you face the music, try to come to grips with whatever happened, work through the issues and move forward? Or do you run? Do you evacuate the premises, the neighborhood, the state even? Perhaps you refuse to see or hear anything related to the harrowing incident that has gotten you down. If you ditch the group of friends that made you mad, or drop the class with the professor you accidentally offended, you know what you are: An escapist. You’re one of those people who thinks that if you never return to the store where the salesclerk bitched you out, it’s almost as if that lady does not exist. And if she doesn’t exist, you don’t have to feel bummed that she called you a stuck-up pig, right?

Wrong. In her debut novel, Styling Wellywood: A fashionable romantic comedy, Kate O’Keeffe drives home the point that you cannot always escape from your problems, no matter how far you run. The book’s protagonist, young, attractive, self-deprecating Jessica Banks, is an escapist extraordinaire. The book begins as Jessica reluctantly returns to her hometown of Wellington, New Zealand, single and unemployed. After a mysterious tragedy four years earlier, Jessica had left her family and her besties behind, hightailing it out of town. She spent the next few years living it up in London, but sadly, her visa expired, and she has been forced to return home. The story opens with Jessica watching her younger cousin’s school play, in the same auditorium where she performed as a child, and wondering how she has ended up exactly where she started.

Luckily for Jessica, she has at least arranged a professional venture with one of her best childhood friends. The beautiful and fashion-forward Morgan has agreed to include Jessica as a junior partner in her personal styling business. Jessica also reconnects with her old friend Laura, who is now a spit-up covered, harried mother of twins and Ben, the guy who has been vetting Jessica’s boyfriends since high school. Laura tries to convince Jessica to visit the parents of their other childhood BFF, Lindsay, who is mysteriously absent during much of the story. In typical escapist fashion, however, Jessica continually avoids the task, thereby letting us know that there is a big unresolved issue awaiting consideration.

Meanwhile, Jessica’s mother convinces her to play tennis at the local country club as a means of getting her single self out there. Before she knows it, the world’s hottest tennis pro is pursuing her. His looks make up for what he’s missing between his ears, and Jessica feels her time in Wellington might not be as bad as she expected. Sadly, just a couple of weeks into her return, everything seems to fall apart. Morgan disappears, leaving nothing but a hasty text message and Jessica holding the proverbial styling bag for many a high maintenance client. Worse yet, Laura loses her patience with Jessica’s apparent self-involvement, and Ben turns out to be not at all what Jessica always thought.

Jessica reaches a point where she can do little more than return to the single bed in her very lavender childhood bedroom and hide under her very lavender covers. She is finally motivated by financial necessity to continue the styling business in Morgan’s absence. Although she is petrified to fail without Morgan’s help, she soon learns that she is more capable than she realized. She also discovers that helping her clients deal with personal problems (like getting over a divorce or building self-esteem) through fashion and styling improvements actually helps her make many discoveries and positive changes to herself, as well. It’s not until she goes on a trip to visit her father and his new-age second wife, Morning (yes, that’s her name), that she understands she must face her Wellington demons before she can move forward with her life. Once she stops trying to escape, she might even discover that she doesn’t want to.

Part Bridget Jones’s Diary and part Eat, Pray, Love, O’Keefe’s book blends multiple styles to form a novel that is all its own. At first glance, the book presents like a light, summer beach read. The pacing is fast and there are many romantic conundrums and slapstick snafus. However, underneath the apparent light-hearted fluff are several weighty issues, which O’Keeffe treats with sensitivity, finesse and just the right touch of humor.

This ambitious novel tackles topics ranging from friendship, motherhood and divorce to sexual orientation and mental health issues, all while presenting a charming travelogue about the windiest city in New Zealand (which is apparently the windiest city on the entire Earth). Pieces of the novel might seem trite, like Jessica’s cocktail-drinking man-obsessed divorced mother, her high school arch nemesis who has of course, grown into a beautiful and successful woman, and the romance that you can predict from the novel’s start. Even so, the story’s circuitous path and the meatiness of the underlying issues are sufficient to set this book apart. It is worth escaping to a quiet spot to read O’Keeffe’s engrossing tale.

Thanks to Kate O'Keeffe for the book in exchange for an honest review. She has TWO e-books (Kindle) for some lucky readers anywhere in the world! 

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Worldwide. Giveaway ends August 3rd at midnight EST.


Jacqueline Berkell Friedland is currently an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, where she is studying fiction. She if a former attorney and law school professor. When she is not writing, Jacqueline can be found plowing through novels or chasing after her four young children.