The High Moments by Sara-Ella Ozbeck

I’m so excited to be a part of the blog tour for The High Moments by Sara-Ella Ozbeck, and today is my day! The High Moments is Sara’s debut novel, and it’s safe to say, I’m definitely interested to see what Sara’s going to do next!

Synopsis

January 01, 2016 at 9:02AM
 
NY RESOLUTIONS – THE PLAN 
Exercise 6 times a week 
Have sex once a month min. (counts as exercise)
Move out of home TO LONDON (career??)
Make more friends
Be better 
 
New Year’s Day is the ultimate cliché for Scarlett:
 
hangover, check
feeling weepy, check
broken sense of self, check check check
 
She is in her twenties, stuck living at home in small-town Topsham with an academic mother who has no time for pep-talks or consolation. The one saving grace is that her friend, Billie, still works at the pub down the road, but even the pub is losing its appeal.
 
Feeling desperate to do something with her life and with no real plan (but the mother of all hangovers), Scarlett picks up her stuff and moves to London. But moving isn’t a miracle cure and she ends up facing exactly the same problems she was desperate to escape.
 
In the search for ‘her path’, Scarlett is offered an internship at a fashion agency. This might not be her dream job but her mother is disgusted. So she takes it. This is her first step to becoming something but it is also her first step to becoming someone else. Each terrible decision she makes leads to another and her life begins to spiral.
 
But people are starting to know her; she is starting to become someone. And surely it’s better to be someone – even if it’s someone you hate?

The High Moments by Sara-Ella Ozbeck

I really enjoyed this one, it gave me The Devil Wears Prada feels almost straight away (I haven’t read the book yet, but I definitely got the film vibes). I’m not sure that TDWP theme stayed throughout, I mean I don’t remember there being that much sex and cocaine in there, but the idea of a young woman with little interest in models becoming absorbed in the modelling industry and changing both her personality and looks for it too was definitely in there.

I loved Scarlett’s story, yes, she annoyed me at times, her choices made me want to shake her and ask her what on earth was she thinking?! The way she treated her lifelong friend Billie, her ‘best friend’ Lilah, and don’t even mention her choices when it came to Zack! But I just needed to read more and more to see what was going to happen next. It’s ironic that she calls Steph ‘Hot Mess’ at the beginning of the book, yet that is just the description that fits the woman she becomes, which she admits herself later in the book.

As much as Scarlett did slightly annoy me on occasion, I also felt so much for her too. She was sucked into a lifestyle that she never really wanted. That mother/daughter relationship that is so important just wasn’t there. Her father was definitely not the greatest. And that small comment with such a big thing about her and her cousin?! That’s all even before the new lifestyle she has begins to make her world crumble around her.

I loved that we got to see the whole year after beginning the book with those New Year’s resolutions. To see the difference a year can really make, and oh did it make a difference! What I really loved was the the journey we got to follow Scarlett on, and how we saw that journey end as the reader. It just made me feel so much!

The blog tour for this fab book is on until the 26th September, and our very own Laura from The Ladies Who Read will be ending the tour, so make sure you check out the other bloggers below and head back over here to see Laura’s opinions on it too!

Thank you so much to Simon and Schuster UK and Sara-Ella Ozbek for gifting me my copy of The High Moments, and to Anne Cater for including me on this blog tour with Random Things Tours!