Living The Dream by Lauren Berry

Emma is a writer.  She knows she is; it is what feeds her soul.  But she spends her days as a 'creative' at a London marketing firm where they have high hopes for her talent and intuition but where she feels she is slowly dying.  Her boss is a joke whom she has to kowtow to on a daily basis and she only has one person there she considers a friend.  She has a blog with a small readership and she wants to take the next step but is paralyzed by the fear of striking out on her own.

Clementine has just returned to London from her college days in New York.  She got her degree in theatre and has a play that was well received by her professors.  She is working a dead end job in a bar while she shops her play around to various agents, hoping to make a breakthrough of all the piles of work they routinely get.  Best friends from their childhood, the two women support each other in matters of love, friendship and trying to carve out a career.

There are various men who come and go, are just passing encounters or desired relationships that never quite materialize.  There is the common friend who is about to get married so that the women get the full Bridezilla experience as she wends her way nearer her nuptials.  Above all, there is the deft touch of the author who makes these characters believable and ones that the reader is delighted to cheer on.

This is the author's first novel although not her first work.  She created a feminist 'zine Knockback and spends her time writing about the female experience.  Her work has been featured in English newspapers and magazines.  Readers will, at the end of this novel, hope that she will also continue to write novels as this first one is a delight.