Review: The Checklist by Addie Woolridge

Hi all!

My name is Chiara and I am a Bookworm.

Today I would like to introduce you to the book that got me back into reading. I don’t know what about it set me off but it’s started something and now I just can’t stop.

The Checklist

by Addie Woolridge

Blurb

In an energetic debut novel about personal and professional chaos, author Addie Woolridge introduces a multicultural cast whose exploits are redefining the modern rom-com.

Killing it at work? Check. Gorgeous boyfriend? Check. Ambitions derailed by an insecure boss? Sigh—check.

Things were going a little too well for Dylan Delacroix. After upstaging her boss on a big account, she gets dispatched to the last place she wants to be: her hometown, Seattle. There, she must use her superstar corporate-consulting skills to curb the worst impulses of an impossibly eccentric tech CEO—if she doesn’t, she’s fired.

The fun doesn’t stop there: Dylan must also negotiate a ceasefire in the endless war between her bohemian parents and the straitlaced neighbors. Adding to the chaos is a wilting relationship with her boyfriend and a blossoming attraction to the neighbors’ smoking-hot son.

Suddenly Dylan has a million checklists, each a mile long. As personal and professional pressures mount, she finds it harder and harder to stay on track. Having always relied on her ability to manage the world around her, Dylan’s going to need a new plan. She may be down, but she’s definitely not out.

Review

What to say about the checklist? I bought it because it appeared in my emails. I’ll be that honest. I wasn’t in the mood to read much of anything and Amazon sent me an ‘Amazon first’ email and there was a book I knew nothing about that I bought on a complete whim. I don’t even remember if I read the blurb … though I hope I did, so I wasn’t just buying a book because it was a romcom.

Our main character Dylan, (named for Bob Dylan if you must know) is a productivity consultant. No, I didn’t know what one of those was when I started, but to sum up, she is some one who comes in and helps right sinking ships [read companies]. She come from a creative, weird and wacky, in the best way, in my opinion, family and is determined to find order in the chaos that is the world.

After her last consulting gig went fantastically, and she is expecting the job of her dreams in Paris, Dylan gets shunted sideways into a gig that may very well end her career. Technocore. And back to Seattle land of rain, sushi bars with 2000s slow jam music, and her parents.

This is, inevitably, hardest job that anyone has ever had to face, which thinking back on it could have been cliched, but at the time it didn’t feel it. All the highs, the lows, the stress and the triumphs you went through with Dylan. And when it all went predictably pear shaped, you routed for her to find her way out, without it all just falling into her lap.

I loved the plot of the book which had so many themes I hardly know where to start. Good business, being honest with your friends, relationships, and good parenting is also knowing when to step as much as when to step in. And also that if something feels wrong it probably is, and speaking up is a strength.

I loved Addie Woolridge’s characters, all of whom were 3D individuals who were unique, unafraid to be themselves and willing to go after what they wanted even if that was a share of the bed, or to house a tiger statue on the front lawn.

I suppose the main question you will have for me was did it all end happily? Well for that, I highly suggest you read the book!

This is the first Addie Woolridge book I have read but I am sure that there will be other in the not so distant future.