Melissa Nathan
The Waitress
I picked this book up during a time of deep self doubt, about whether I was heading down the right life path, something that I’m still not sure of, years later. And so from early on in the novel, I related to Katie, probably a bit more than I should have. She is struggling to find her place, unsure about what she truly wants to do with her life, and facing pressure from her family members, who are concerned that she hasn’t reached the stage in her life that she should have.
Nathan paints her as a very likable character, and her lightness of directing the plot means that this is one of the select few ‘chick lit’ books which I have reread quite a few times. I read several more of Nathan’s books, the comparative lack of predictability within the plot, well when I compared it to others within the ‘chick lit’ genre, and the fact that I genuinely liked and rooted for Katie, made me hopeful that Nathan had managed to carry that on in her other novels.
I wasn’t disappointed when I managed to get my hands on Nathan’s books, ‘Learning Curve’ ‘The Nanny’ ‘Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field’, a modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice, as you could probably guess from the title. ‘Persuading Annie’ which was a modern day Persuasion, and one of the reasons that I have been drawn back to Nathan’s books more than once. I will discuss these two further within the extensive Jane Austen review, I have planned.
However Nathan’s light touch, and ability to create believable characters within a genre which is unfortunately overpopulated by consistently quite irritating female characters, who too often spend their lives, wishing and hoping that a certain man will ‘fix’ everything, is one of the many reasons that I will always respect her.
Musings of a thirtysomething woman 