Sapphire by Katie Price

“Don’t be so dismissive of him, Sapphire, just because he was nice to you,”

I had always known that Katie Price (a popular British celebrity commonly known as Jordan) had fiction books to her name, but didn’t pick this one up until recently. Of course, I knew this was written by a ghostwriter because most of all, it felt so generic. I suppose its partly my fault because I went into reading this knowing it was going to be trashy.

The characters all felt very one dimensional, at one point in the story only differentiated by their hair colour and height. This book was such a drag to read, but what annoyed me most is how it was full of stereotypes it was – such as the cardboard cut-out Ukrainian gangster, the fat friend who is looked down on by the main character, the main character being rude about all the characters who aren’t her, etc etc.

There was a lot of exposition, so much so that it made me want to throw the book out of the window. The main character, Sapphire, was a complete hypocrite whose indecision between two bland love interests bordered on the tedious. Every single character had as much depth as a puddle, and many times didn’t really seem like characters at all it just felt like they were there to tell Sapphire that she was a strong woman (she wasn’t, but never mind that).

Not to mention, the innumerable formatting mistakes were irritating because it just makes the writing look lazy. I know this book was published in 2009 so its not new by any stretch of the imagination, but this whole book felt very rushed especially as a lot of the formatting and spelling mistakes were persistent throughout the book’s entirety.

The themes – fame, sexual assault, identity, friendship, love – are treated with superficiality which was especially enraging when a scene of female on male sexual assault was written for comedy, and even more insulting was the strong overtones of homophobia that persisted, such as insinuating that the male victim would become gay because of the assault.

Usually, when I review a book I try to find something likeable about this book but in this instance I could find nothing; it’s complete trash with nothing to redeem it from the dark depths of fictional ignominy. It’s not even a book funny enough to read with a wry grimace and a chuckle. It’s just….nothing.

MY RATING: * / *****