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About the Book

 

Sweet, bookish Neve Slater always plays by the rules.

And the rule is that good-natured fat girls like her don’t get guys like gorgeous William, heir to Neve’s heart since university. But William’s been in LA for three years, and Neve’s been slimming down and reinventing herself so that when he returns, he’ll fall head over heels in love with the new her.

So she’s not that interested in other men. Until her sister points out that if Neve wants William to think she’s an experienced love-goddess and not the awkward girl he left behind, then she’d better get some, well, experience.

What Neve needs is someone to show her the ropes, someone like Celia’s colleague Max. Wicked, shallow, sexy Max. And since he’s such a man-slut, and so not Neve’s type, she certainly won’t fall for him. Because William is the man for her … right?

Sarra Manning is an author and journalist. She started her career on the music paper Melody Maker, then spent five years working on the legendary UK teen mag J17, as Entertainment Editor. Sarra was also editor of Ellegirl and What To Wear.

Sarra now writes for ELLE, Grazia, Red, InStyle, the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Stylist and the Sunday Telegraph’s Stella. Her teen novels, which include Guitar Girl, Let’s Get Lost, The Diary Of A Crush trilogy and The Fashionistas series, have been translated into numerous languages, and in 2008 and 2010 she was shortlisted for the Book People’s Queen of Teen award.

Sarra’s first grown-up novel, Unsticky, was published in 2009, and her latest teen novel, Nobody’s Girl, was published in 2010.

Sarra lives in north London.

To the girl I used to be who had the good sense and the determination to go on a diet and stick with it.

 

Thanks

 

Finally I’d like to thank my agent, Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown, for her wise counsel and supreme unflappability, and Catherine Cobain at Transworld for being my biggest cheerleader and silk-pursing my prose style.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

Virginia Woolf

 

PART ONE

 

Wishin’ And Hopin’

Chapter One

 

Neve could feel her knickers and tights make a bid for freedom as soon as she sat down.

She shuffled to the edge of her seat so she could plant her feet firmly on the floor, straighten her back and yank in her abdominal muscles. It didn’t work. Her doubly reinforced waistband suddenly gave way and she could feel her tummy gleefully push against the seams of the vintage dress that she’d told her younger sister, Celia, she couldn’t get into without the aid of Spanx and bodyshaper tights.

As usual, Celia had refused to take no for an answer, in the same way that she’d refused to listen to Neve’s pleas to be allowed to stay at home with a pot of tea and a good book. That was why Neve was perched uncomfortably on a neon-pink chaise longue in a hot stuffy club in Soho surrounded on all sides by hordes of fashionably dressed people who were all shrieking at each other to make themselves heard over the reverberating bass-heavy music.