Four Ways to Wear a Dress - Gillian Libby

Author: Gillian Libby

Genre: Contemporary Drama, Romance

Rating: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: For those who love Instagram and Instagrammers. Not my cup of tea. Irritating and contradictory mc. Meh plot except when it comes to steam and Instagram.

Story Synopsis:

Millie has been fired from her marketing job and to get a break, she decides to go to Peacock Bay, a remote surfer’s paradise in California where her college bestie Quincy lives with her family and works as a successful influencer on Instagram. The fact that Quincy’s hot brother, Pete, is also there running his family hotel is an added bonus. Before she moves, Millie finds a little black dress that she shared with her three college friends (including Quincy.) The girls consider this dress lucky, so Millie hopes some of the luck will come her way in California.

Peacock Bay is full of influencers, so Millie has to do whatever she can to gain more followers. When this involves telling the world that Pete is her Instagram Husband, things begin changing faster than she can handle.

The story is written in the first person perspective of Millie.

Where the book worked for me:

😍 I learnt a lot (theoretically) about surfing. I love the beach but haven’t ever traversed the waves on a surfboard (nor am I likely to!) So seeing the surfer lifestyle vicariously was great fun.

😍 I liked the fictional Peacock Bay. The story uses its location very well. If it were an actual place, it would have been on my must-visit destinations list.

😍 There are a few interesting characters I would have loved to know more. Pete especially was a fabulous character. (His only flaw was that he fell for Millie.) Quincy, Amelia and Sage had great potential too, but they are underutilised. And I can’t forget baby Claire!

😍 There are some important topics raised – sustainable living, eco-friendly activities, buying local. All of these could have been better developed but yeah, at least they were present in the narrative.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

😔 Right from the start, I could see that the writing isn’t to my taste. Even other than the extraneous and abundant f bombs (I’ve gotten used to them now and treat them as a necessary hazard of contemporary fiction), Millie’s thoughts seem to be restricted to just a few topics. I didn’t get some of the humour. Like when Millie mentions in an inner monologue having made “penis-shaped pretzels”, what was the point of revealing that titbit? The attempt at humour felt so forced.

😔 Millie is a study of contradictions. If anyone has a research assignment on an oxymoronic character, please consider Millie as a prime subject. Here are some examples of her polar thinking:

1. She claims that she can’t reschedule a job interview as it is unprofessional. A few pages later, she drops an email just a little before the scheduled interview time declaring her lack of interest in that position anymore.

2. When Pete asks her not to go surfing alone, she blasts him with “feminist independence” ideologies and how she was a grown woman who didn’t need a man for protection. A few paras later, she claims she knows that Pete only meant that surfing alone was dangerous regardless of gender.

3. Millie has ADHD and every time there’s an upheaval in her emotional situation, she blames it on the disorder At the same time, if anyone makes any reference to her disorder, she sees red. (Actually, even if people weren’t talking about her disorder, she assumed that they did and saw red!)

4. Millie hates it when men objectify her based on her anatomical virtues. Guess what Millie does when she sees men? Nothing like pseudo-feminists to set the cause of gender equality veering on the wrong path.

5. Quincy is supposed to be Millie’s best friend and they’ve stayed in touch all the years after college. Yet Millie doesn’t even know the gender of Quincy’s two children, let alone their names. A couple of pages later, Millie knows every single detail of Alana’s kids, including their date of birth, though she has just seen Alana online. Weird!

😔 ADHD and (possible – yet to be diagnosed) autism are two disorders covered in the book, and both have been handled badly. The character who is possibly autistic serves only as a lever to take a minor arc ahead. It feels like a half-baked idea has been incorporated to justify some moral purpose. ADHD does somewhat better in terms of the attention it gets. But as most of this is from Millie who assumes everyone is judging her for her ADHD (whether they are or not), it gets very repetitive and irritating.

😔 The title doesn’t match the story at all. The ‘little black dress” is supposedly used by the four friends as a lucky charm. We only see Millie using it for almost the entire story. (Don’t know if the author has plans to write a series with one friend each.) So I haven’t figured out what are the “Four Ways to Wear a Dress” if only one friend was wearing it throughout. The plot reminded me strongly of “Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants”, where the four friends share a pair of pants that magically fits all of them and is their lucky charm. But SotTP made better use of the idea; this book is a pale shadow of the original. (Also, Millie, OMG! Could you please launder that dress before packing it and mailing it off to your friend??!?!)

😔 The writing is very repetitive. The characters other than the ones I mentioned are either not developed at all or developed inconsistently.

😔 As some of my friends know, I am not into Instagram. I dislike the filtered lifestyle it promotes. This book reminded me of all the reasons I hate the app. (People actually spray-paint leaves for autumn-based pics? Don’t they ever think about the planet? And this is in a supposedly eco-friendly location!) At the same time, the story takes the Insta influence too far. Getting 75k followers even if you are piggy-backing on some other influencer isn’t an easy task. Millie’s Insta journey seems very farfetched.

⚠ The word “spaz” is used in the book four times, all with the meaning of incompetence or clumsiness. However, “spaz” is derived from “spastic”, and the usage of “spaz” is considered highly offensive in many places. It might be an acceptable lexicon as per the urban dictionary (and from what I could gather online, it is an acceptable word in the US) but I found it insensitive, especially when Millie herself doesn’t like to be labelled as an ADHD sufferer.

I might have enjoyed this book more had Millie’s character been more sensible or likeable, preferably both. But I just couldn’t connect with her and because she was the narrator, the entire experience fell flat for me. This is a debut work, so I hate to be so dismissive of it, but the book hardly clicked for me. It might work better for you if you like Instagram, like almost-insta romance, and like live-in-the-moment-without-using-your-brain characters. Those looking for steamy scenes will be mighty happy with the spice levels in this story.

My thanks to Sourcebooks Casablanca and NetGalley for the “Read Now” option on this DRC of “Four Ways to Wear a Dress”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.