REVIEW: City of Girls (Elizabeth Gilbert)

Book: City of Girls

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

Premise: New York, 1940. Young, glamorous and inseparable, Vivian and Celia are chasing trouble from one end of the city to the other. But there is risk in all this play - that's what makes it so fun, and so dangerous. Sometimes, the world may feel like it's ending, but for Vivian and Celia, life is just beginning.

I liked this book but it didn't quite leave me satisfied and buzzing. It's about Vivian who moves to New York and lives a wild life surrounded by actors and showgirls. You get a real sense of the glitz and glam of New York. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, following Vivian's flashy life.

However, I think the crashing point came too early and the rest of the book felt flat for me. Suddenly the book starts racing forward in time - the first half of the book was 1940 and the rest covered the years up to 1971! Also, it takes a while for the book to get back to the original point: we're meant to be finding out how she met someone's father. He appears briefly in the first half of the book but we only properly meet him in the last 100 pages or so.

So while I enjoyed each half of the book, to me it felt like they should've been two separate stories. Or they should've been integrated a bit better. But otherwise, enjoyable.