The Charmed Life of Alex Moore

Great book. Brilliant storyline and excellent main characters. I would not hesitate to recommend this book.

Alex Moore has transformed her life in six months, since the brilliant idea for her new tech start-up (don’t ask me to explain or even understand it) came to her out of the blue one night. Now Dorothy Alexandra Moore (she dropped the Dorothy, understandably) is a rising star, with her face in magazines and a whole new outlook on life. So what if there are things she can’t quite remember about the old Alex, with her boring job and limited horizons?

Some strange things are happening, though - an attempted attack, a fake journalist - and when Alex is invited to participate in a research project on the remote Orcadian island of Iskeull, it seems the perfect opportunity to get out of London and spend a few days recharging. What she finds there, though, is truly mind-bending. Dorothy definitely isn’t in Kansas any more...

This is a very difficult book to describe - despite a wry early reference to “yet another high-concept psychological thriller”, it isn’t that, or not only that anyway... though it is definitely high-concept, undoubtedly psychological, and often thrilling. I think it’s unfair to say more than that, though. You’ll have to find out for yourself.

An enthralling, imaginative read about memory, technology and the stories that shape our lives, and an ending filled with possibility. Simply marvellous.

A similar review will also be posted on my blog and on Amazon. Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

This is a weird and wonderful story. Alex Moore has become really successful in the last 6 months. She literally dreamed up a concept that has become really successful. Then she gets mugged and is accused of murder. Everything changes. This is a magical story that I would definitely recommend.

Such a unique story that follows the story of someone experiencing a massive change and how it rattles those around them. What you don’t know is that the new Alex is the result of an experiment gone wrong. Her memories have been altered at the core and the new Alex is more confident more reckless and altogether more. The story follows as she tries to save an island while trying to save her love life at the same time.

This is a startlingly original and emotive debut from Molly Flatt that is beautifully written and highly imaginative, although it does require a huge suspension of disbelief. 31 year old Dorothy Alex Moore's life used to be humdrum, frustrating and heading absolutely on the road to nowhere. Having dropped Dorothy, she is now Alex, and everything is now different as she is now living the fairytale life. She launched a tech start up business which out of the blue is an unbelievable success. She is popular, admired and much sought after, everything should be perfect, but there are a few niggles. Her family and personal circle of friends struggle and can't quite keep up with all the changes in her circumstances, and her fiance is visibly stepping away from her.

Things become downright weird as Alex encounters the oddest of journalists, is stalked, mugged and there is even a claim that she is a murderer. As Alex's life begins to slip out of her control, she finds herself accepting an invitation to visit the Orkney Islands. At which point Alex steps into a truly fantastical bizarre old world, as she leaves behind any semblance of the world as she knows it. Alex is to find all her narcissistic assumptions that she is solely responsible for her stratospheric success are a million miles away from the truth. This is a magical story where anything is possible, and which focuses on the issues of our memories, technology and the narratives that build and define our identities.

This is a wonderful novel, but it is far from perfect, it is a challenging read that demands patience, this might put off many readers who might not be willing to persevere. There are times where the narrative feels distinctly uneven as the storyline has a tendency to meander and the ending is rather overladen with its numerous reveals. However, I loved the narrative and the way it showcases so much promise in the writing of Molly Flatt. If you are looking for something different from the usual run of mill books, then I highly recommend The Charmed Life of Alex Moore. I have no doubts that Molly Flatt is a talented writer and I look forward to what she comes up with next. A brilliant read. Many thanks to Pan MacMillan for an ARC.

This is an extraordinary debut and not everyone is going to like it. My advice is to bear with it and go with the flow. It’s originality and beautiful prose makes it worth staying with.
It starts as modern take set in an internet start-up. The Founder CEO Alex Moore, has become stratospherically successful in the short space of six months and her dot com business is flying high. Out of the blue, she is invited to a mysterious microstate on one of the Orkney islands. Alex, in her self-obsessed bubble, assumes it is because she is such a success story, but she’s wrong.
Somehow, her success was the symptom of a seismic change in a very mysterious organisation far bigger than hers. If you’ve come this far, this is where it gets a bit Doctor Who. In fact, I feel Doctor Who is a good comparison because it combines reality with more mysterious forces that we don’t always understand or know about.
What follows is a long and beautifully described story that is so much bigger than Alex Moore’s start up. I must give a shout out to the prose- it is superb. There are phrases I read four times because they were so beautiful. The descriptions are vivid and believable without being laboured or overlong and the narrative shimmers with a vast spectrum of emotion and a nuance of parody at its core (especially when it comes to the jargon used by the start-up team in the beginning – the author is definitely parodying them.)
One slight niggle I have is that the dénouement was very long and complicated and there were almost too many revelations in it, like having a series of tennis balls thrown at you until you don’t even know why they’re being thrown anymore. The last 10% of my kindle version was revelation after revelation and the pile-on lost impact. I felt some of these twists could have been measured out earlier, rather than given all at once. It was overwhelming trying to remember who was who and what their motivation was and what they’d done earlier in the book and who their allies were. It was hard to read.
However, this is a remarkably original debut- there really isn’t anything else like it out there and I hope to read more from Molly Flatt in future. It’s a debut, and it sort of shows in places, but the prose and the imagination offers a great deal of promise. Just leave your inhibitions at the door and read it with an open mind.
One last note- if you are emetophobic, you might like to skip this one- there is a lot of nausea and puking!
With thanks to NetGalley for an early read of this exciting debut.