Review: Girl Before A Mirror by Liza Palmer

Girl Before a Mirror by Liza Palmer
Publication date: Jan. 27, 2015
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Category: Adult - Contemporary
Source: Purchased
Summary: Anna Wyatt is at a crossroads. Recently divorced & forty, she’s done a lot of emotional housecleaning & is struggling to figure out what her life needs. Brainstorming to win over an important new client, she discovers a self-help book—Be the Heroine, Find Your Hero—that offers her unexpected insights & leads her to a romance writers’ conference. If she can sign the Romance Cover Model of the Year winner & meet the author who has inspired her—she’ll win the account. For Anna, taking control means taking chances, including getting to know Sasha, her pretty young colleague & indulging in a steamy elevator ride with Lincoln Mallory, a dashing financial consultant she meets in the hotel. When the conference ends, Anna & Lincoln must decide if their intense connection is strong enough to survive outside the fantasy they’ve created. And now that her campaign is off the ground, coworkers want to steal her success & her brother is spiraling out of control. To have the life she wants, she has to put herself first, embrace her imperfections & passions, & be the heroine of her own story. (Adapted goodreads.com)

The good

Do you ever read books where you wish you could highlight half of it but your OCD just won't let you? That was my experience with Girl Before A Mirror. It didn't matter that Anna Wyatt was over 10 years older than me, divorced and an account executive – basically everything I'm not. Those are just numbers and labels. What I connected to were her emotions and fears and what she was trying to sort through in her life. The author gives us a flawed heroine who could easily be any one of us while at the same time delivering a powerful message about women and taking charge of one's life.

Anna is at a turning point. She's struggling to figure out what her life needs to be and as a result, she's evaluating all aspects of it. Friends (who to keep and who to let go), dating (as in not happening right now) and work. Professionally, she wants to make her mark at her company and begins pitching to an important potential client. As she's doing research for what their ad campaign could be, she finds the self-help book Be the Heroine, Find Your Hero. It becomes incredibly fitting as she not only finds inspiration for her ad but also for herself. To woo the company and author of said book, she attends a romance writer's conference with new coworker Sasha, who is her wing woman on this client and eventual friend. The conference ends up broadening her horizons professionally and personally as she meets new people, confides in Sasha and has an unexpected romance with Lincoln Mallory. (He sounds gorgeous and unreal and tell me where can I find someone like him?)

But it's not just about her work or even the romance despite the big roles they play. I mean her work is infused into almost every page and yet it wasn't so much about the actual job. It was about what she wanted to do. Who does she want to work for? What kind of work interests her? What will make her happy and proud and fulfilled? Like Anna I have a good, steady job and I ask myself these same questions and I still don't know the answers most of the time. The journey and self-discovery she goes through to get those answers was incredibly inspiring. As were her reflections on friendship and family. How I related! She goes through changes with certain friends that I absolutely got. Then she has a younger brother, Ferdie, who she loves dearly but he's spiraling out of control. It's a constant battle for her to figure out when to step in and when to step back to let him fix things on his own. This is so me with my own family! Needless to say, there was barely an aspect of her life that I didn't relate to, except for meeting a wonderful guy like Lincoln. (Seriously, where are you?)

(No) reservations

None! It made me laugh and cry and I was completely absorbed in it.

Do I recommend?

This is my second Liza Palmer book and I am just.. such a fan now. As much as I enjoyed Nowhere But Home, this book just hit me harder on a personal level and I just want everyone to read it.