Consider Lily--She is 28 and lives in San Francisco. She works in her parents' successful Traywick's Dept. store that sells high end fashion. Never mind that Lily, herself, hates fashion. She is a t-shirt, shorts, khaki pants, flip flops, sneakers kind of girl who loves to play co-ed softball. She has had only three dates in her life, and she lives at home with her parents who never seem satisfied with her. She is a Christian and she is looking for the right guy to make her life complete. In fact, she calls herself "boy crazy". I am not divulging her secrets here--she reveals all this and much more on her blog entitled Fashion Victim.
It is Lily's friend, Reagan, who loves fashion and happens to also work at Traywick's, who gets Lily to transform herself on the outside. All of a sudden, the girl who hates fashion, starts wearing cute skirts and dresses and stylish shoes, finds herself getting dates. Wow! Who knew? And...the one that could be The One comes along and boom! Lily's life is good.
But...don't forget that blog where she writes much more. It is there, anonymously, that she vents. She says rather unkind, unflattering, and perhaps unChristian-like comments about everyone in her life. Hey, it's harmless; and it even hooks her up with an editor from the San Francisco Chronicle as a freelance writer. He has discovered her true identity and is hoping that she will write about the dark and seedy side of the fashion world but will, for now, settle for more human interest stories about the San Francisco area. Problem is, more of her stories become edited and come across as mean and snarky. Bigger problem is, her identity and her blog site is revealed. Wow! Who knew? People who were unaware of the blog began searching it out and remember those unkind, unflattering, and perhaps unChristian-like comments about her friends? Yeah, they are no longer anonymous. Lily's life has fallen apart.
Now Lily has to find a way to make amends, and maybe, transform herself again; only not on the outside this time.
Frankly, I found this book annoying. Lily was annoying. Her friends were annoying. The plot was annoying. It all seemed so juvenile to me in the conversation, the actions, the problems the characters faced. I just didn't connect to any of it. I don't know why I toughed it out to the end. Still, Lily put her life back together again. I hope she grows up.
I know I am in the minority here, but I was so disappointed after reading Emily Ever After by this pair of authors. I really enjoyed that one. Maybe because it was their second book and their rough edges were polished, but if I had read Consider Lily first, I wouldn't have gone on to meet Emily.