Review: Bad Heir Day by Wendy Holden
Bad Heir Day: A Comedy of High Class and Dire Straits by Wendy Holden. Sourcebooks Landmark; Reprint edition (September 1, 2010); ISBN: 978-1402240614; 352 Pages. Price: List $14.99 (Amazon: $10.79 / Kindle: $9.99).
Anna Farrier’s life is going nowhere when Bad Heir Day begins. She’s living with Sebastian “Seb” Lavenham, an upper-class playboy with commitment problems. After attending a wedding of one of Seb’s school friends at Dampie Castle on the Island of Skul, Anna begins to take a hard look at her current situation and reluctantly admits it’s going beyond depressing. She hasn’t written anything in a long time and in reality she’s nothing but Seb’s live-in maid with benefits. She’s ready for a change.
Luckily, at the wedding, while Seb was making out with all his old girlfriends, she met Geri, a woman with a plan for her life, who was full of helpful hints on how to get Anna’s life on track, beginning with becoming an author’s assistant. Anna puts up an ad and gets a call from Cassandra Knight who just lost her au pair – again – and needs a replacement but the service won’t send anyone else out to care for her hellion of a son, Zachary. Anna accepts the position thinking it’s to help with research and writing and ends up being an extremely low-paid babysitter and household help.
It turns out the waiter she met at the wedding actually owns the castle and he’s in desperate need of a wife. By the time he shows up in London, Anna’s experience as Cassandra’s pseudo-slave, Zach’s victim, and Jett’s (Cassandra’s husband) potential conquest has not helped her self-esteem or her writing. She’s ready for a change.
Bad Heir Day is a lot of fun even while being totally predictable. However, I read this almost immediately after reading Farm Fatale and found the underlying structure to be quite similar. I think if I’d had more time between the two books, the plot structure wouldn’t have been as noticeable. Even so there were some great one liners and lots of eye-rolling moments as the story unfolded. The characters are more archetypes than fully developed but in the context of the odd-ball romantic comedy story, it really doesn’t matter.
Bad Heir Day is pure entertainment with a mild message of “don’t ruin your life trying to be someone you’re not”. Just grab a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, put up your feet, and enjoy watching someone else’s life going off the rails and somehow finding a perfect mate in spite of the chaos their life has become.