A wet winter's afternoon demands a book like this. You settle down somewhere warm and let the book wrap itself round you. Sophie is gorgeous - feisty, intelligent and funny, but thick as two short planks when it comes to James Stephens. Anyone who has ever been besotted by a man will recognise the scenario. Maybe if you tried that ''little'' bit harder. Maybe you're boxing above your weight. Maybe you don't deserve him? I didn't look up from this book until I was more than half-way through - and sometimes I was just about shouting at Sophie. Yep - I was ''totally'' involved in this story.
Add to that the food background. There's a continuum between eating to living live and living to eat. I'm right at the latter end of it - and occasionally dropping off the scale. And this book is about good food - not the ''fine dining'' you see on Masterchef, but the the real food that we all eat on a daily basis. Stella Newman knows food - just have a look at her [http://stellanewmansblog.blogspot.com/ blog] and you'll see what I mean. You'll understand why the desserts in M&S are so gorgeous and why others so often seem like pale immitations and you'll start to look very carefully at the lists of ingredients before you buy. Normally this is the point at which I'd say that you really shouldn't read this book if you're on a diet - but I've got a better idea.
Unless you're on a diet for medical reasons - forget it. Accept yourself as you are and stop weighing yourself. This might be women's fiction (no - not chick-lit: it's much more intelligent than that) but ultimately it's about self-image. How you look only matters to one person and if you need to change it then you need to work out why. Love yourself.