The cardinal sin committed by this book is that it’s just too boring. If you’re going to be a trash read, then be a trash read. This is basically 400 pages explaining how a rich woman bought a shop and then hired some fashion and sales experts to make it a success, followed by 200 pages detailing how a film producer produced a film. Which is all fair enough, but hardly riveting.

Also, the sexual politics are horrifying, the casual racism is pervasive, the sex scenes are downright unpleasant and there’s a lot of aggressive homophobia. There’s also a surfeit of chauvinistic, domineering men who claim to love women but actually fetishise and belittle them. Also it takes an inordinate amount of time to reach a very traditional conclusion, with the status quo being maintained and everyone making exactly the choices they would be expected to make.

However there is some not-bad writing buried in here somewhere, so I’m giving it 2 stars.