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Selling Out
Book by Lees, Amanda
293 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
27 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 15, 2024
i read it quite quickly, the plot was quite wattpad like which isn’t always an insult. it wasn’t terrible but it was very drawn out, i feel as if there was at least one or two too many missed moments between alex and nick…
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2020
When Belle De Jour’s writings hit the mainstream, there were several books written along similar themes, some of which were very good, others which weren’t. It turns out that the theme of people working as call girl or escort perhaps wasn’t entirely new, as Amanda Lees’ “Selling Out” mentioned this some years before Belle de Jour’s blog even started, much less before it became popular. Admittedly, this is fiction rather than non-fiction, but this is the earliest I recall a mention of such things.
In “Selling Out”, Alex is supplementing her low paid day job by working as an escort in the evenings. She doesn’t usually sleep with her clients, preferring older gentlemen who are just after arm candy than anything more and she keeps this job a secret from everyone, particularly her highly strung investment banker boyfriend, Richard. This changes one night when she arrives at a hotel room door and it is opened by Nick, who secretly fancies her, but who she has never before seen in this way, as her best friend Simon has designs on his body and, with them living in the same flat, is making plans for Nick to not need his own bedroom for much longer.
After their night together, a series of misunderstandings and miscommunication, combined with a lack of actual communication, causes the two of them to tiptoe around each other. The situation is further compromised by Richard finally proposing to Alex and Alex accepting despite her misgivings about her future with such a man, but failing to see the other options in front of her eyes. Simon, meanwhile, embarks on his attempts to make Nick fall for him by helping him out with his career as well as his living situation and hopes that by helping him settle into a new life, he’ll be able to make Nick settle into his own life.
“Selling Out” takes a little while to get going and so it took me longer to read than the size of the book would suggest, as it’s not terribly well paced to start with and didn’t inspire me to pick it up regularly. As events move along, it does pick up a little and becomes a touch more exciting and a quicker read, although it does finish in something of a rush, almost akin to a stunt driver jumping off a ramp, as it achieves lift off, but then that was the end of things.
The story isn’t terribly engaging either, as it’s a touch repetitive, with Alex and Nick finding ways to get together and on the verge of having the discussion which would make everything clear, before some interruption or misunderstanding suddenly cropping up to get in the way. The two of them keep going through the same emotional rollercoaster of lust, then hope, then disappointment or anger which means the whole thing takes a lot longer than it needs to and it’s really ultimately the same short story told in ever tightening circles until it ends.
Perhaps one of my least favourite things about the book is that it is a touch overwritten, in that the author never uses a few words when many will do. There are too many adjectives in each paragraph and the inner monologues go on too crooked a path on occasions instead of getting to the point. As an overthinker myself, I recognize this a little more than I did the overuse of adjectives, but the combination of these writing styles did mean things dragged out further than they needed to and made the book drag on a little.
One thing I did enjoy about the novel was that there wasn’t an overabundance of characters, with the small cast size meaning it was at least possible to keep people separate and there wasn’t a moment where the storyline and characters could get mixed up with each other, as so often happens. This was a minor saving grace, but combined with far too many coincidental occurrences and unrealistic events which were clearly there to advance the plot and extend the story further than it needed to, as well as rush it towards the ending when that point was near undid all the good work in character building that was done.
“Selling Out” was ultimately a readable enough fluff piece which passed time without ever having to engage any brain cells. It’s perfect for reading at bedtime, on a commute or on a beach, as it never gets in the way sufficiently to keep you awake or distract you enough from more important things, nor is it likely to be memorable enough to play on your mind thereafter. It’s an entirely harmless book which annoyed me in parts for various reasons, but not sufficiently for me to end up hating it, as it simply didn’t inspire any strong emotions at all, despite what the characters were supposedly going through emotionally.
In “Selling Out”, Alex is supplementing her low paid day job by working as an escort in the evenings. She doesn’t usually sleep with her clients, preferring older gentlemen who are just after arm candy than anything more and she keeps this job a secret from everyone, particularly her highly strung investment banker boyfriend, Richard. This changes one night when she arrives at a hotel room door and it is opened by Nick, who secretly fancies her, but who she has never before seen in this way, as her best friend Simon has designs on his body and, with them living in the same flat, is making plans for Nick to not need his own bedroom for much longer.
After their night together, a series of misunderstandings and miscommunication, combined with a lack of actual communication, causes the two of them to tiptoe around each other. The situation is further compromised by Richard finally proposing to Alex and Alex accepting despite her misgivings about her future with such a man, but failing to see the other options in front of her eyes. Simon, meanwhile, embarks on his attempts to make Nick fall for him by helping him out with his career as well as his living situation and hopes that by helping him settle into a new life, he’ll be able to make Nick settle into his own life.
“Selling Out” takes a little while to get going and so it took me longer to read than the size of the book would suggest, as it’s not terribly well paced to start with and didn’t inspire me to pick it up regularly. As events move along, it does pick up a little and becomes a touch more exciting and a quicker read, although it does finish in something of a rush, almost akin to a stunt driver jumping off a ramp, as it achieves lift off, but then that was the end of things.
The story isn’t terribly engaging either, as it’s a touch repetitive, with Alex and Nick finding ways to get together and on the verge of having the discussion which would make everything clear, before some interruption or misunderstanding suddenly cropping up to get in the way. The two of them keep going through the same emotional rollercoaster of lust, then hope, then disappointment or anger which means the whole thing takes a lot longer than it needs to and it’s really ultimately the same short story told in ever tightening circles until it ends.
Perhaps one of my least favourite things about the book is that it is a touch overwritten, in that the author never uses a few words when many will do. There are too many adjectives in each paragraph and the inner monologues go on too crooked a path on occasions instead of getting to the point. As an overthinker myself, I recognize this a little more than I did the overuse of adjectives, but the combination of these writing styles did mean things dragged out further than they needed to and made the book drag on a little.
One thing I did enjoy about the novel was that there wasn’t an overabundance of characters, with the small cast size meaning it was at least possible to keep people separate and there wasn’t a moment where the storyline and characters could get mixed up with each other, as so often happens. This was a minor saving grace, but combined with far too many coincidental occurrences and unrealistic events which were clearly there to advance the plot and extend the story further than it needed to, as well as rush it towards the ending when that point was near undid all the good work in character building that was done.
“Selling Out” was ultimately a readable enough fluff piece which passed time without ever having to engage any brain cells. It’s perfect for reading at bedtime, on a commute or on a beach, as it never gets in the way sufficiently to keep you awake or distract you enough from more important things, nor is it likely to be memorable enough to play on your mind thereafter. It’s an entirely harmless book which annoyed me in parts for various reasons, but not sufficiently for me to end up hating it, as it simply didn’t inspire any strong emotions at all, despite what the characters were supposedly going through emotionally.
June 14, 2018
Started off quite slow, I changed it to the book I read to and from work and found myself not wanting to get off the bus.
July 28, 2023
Just terrible. I think I picked this up in a little free library in France, thinking it would be a nice easy read, which it was, but I'm not sure why anyone would read this in his native language. It was interesting how unfrench the translated phrasing was: definitely English turns of phrase directly translated into French words.
November 9, 2010
It is worrisome to me that I have no memory whatsoever of reading this. I found it on an old booklist this morning(how I kept track of what I read in the days before goodreads). I had given it two and a half stars, but since it obviously wasn't memorable enough for me to have retained one iota of recollection about it, I took away the half star.
September 2, 2007
Wordy McWordy. Each paragraph had about thirty adjectives.
Otherwise, aside from really, far too many words, it was a classic story line. They love each other, but they don’t know that the other loves them back
Otherwise, aside from really, far too many words, it was a classic story line. They love each other, but they don’t know that the other loves them back
October 22, 2012
Fast perfekt ist das Buch wirklich nicht, dann hätte ich wohl doch mehr als nur ca. 25 Seiten gelesen. Laaangweilig.
November 18, 2015
Readable but with some seriously questionable elements. Not a fan of the predatory GBF trope.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews