Beyond The Lens by Hannah Ellis

I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  I enjoy a good rom-com as much as the next woman "of a certain age" but it is always a bit of a risk trying a new author.  Luckily Ms Ellis does not disappoint and has presented the reader with a quirky and funny novel that centres around a reality TV show.  I was expecting something along the lines of UnReal but whilst it does touch on the manipulation of the edit suite it is much more about the disparate group of characters thrown together by circumstance.

At first it took me a while to get on board with the whole premise - grabbing 7 strangers from the street and flying them out to spend a week free of charge in a Spanish Finca, the only catch being they agree to be filmed.  Each of the 7 (Dylan, Ryan, Matt, Kelly, Margaret, Chrissie and our heroine Lucy) have wildly different reasons for taking the week out of their real lives; the only problem for the production team is they genuinely get along.  The only problem for me was that they were all a little bit too drama free and I did find it hard to countenance that 7 disparate people would gel so much.  It did make for fun reading though.

The real problems start when they get back to Manchester and find that they have been broadcast live to the nation and in a way that is unrepresentative of the actual week they spent.  There is a nice little twist to the story and a moral about what the media (social and traditional) can do to manipulate the consumer.

I did find myself less interested in the budding romance between Adam the cameraman and Lucy than in the friendships developing between the lucky 7; particularly after they return to Manchester.  Whilst the romance angle is well drawn and, for the genre, moderately believable I was much more interested in the characters and how they related to each other and their sudden fame rather than whether Adam and Lucy were really going to make a go of it.

This fun and frothy and would make the perfect beach read.