Don’t Stop Me Now by Colleen Coleman #BlogTour @bookouture @CollColemanAuth

Happy Tuesday everyone! Bordeaux is not having much luck with its weather, so I am happy today I am on the last stop of the blog tour for Don’t Stop Me Now, which is a real ray of sunshine!

Title: Don’t Stop Me Now
Author: Colleen Coleman
Publisher: Bookouture
Date of publication: March 22nd 2017
Format reviewed: eARC
Source: Publisher
Number of pages: 272
Rating:

A hilarious feel good read about making lemonade when life gives you lemons, and finding the silver lining in every cloud.

Poppy Bloom planned to finish her PhD and walk straight into a job at her university. But here she is, unemployed, unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, and living back at her mum’s in her vampire-themed childhood bedroom.

Not exactly what she was hoping for.

But when Poppy sets her mind to something, nothing can stand in her way. She scores herself an internship at the hottest radio station in town, joins a netball team, and renews her friendship with her oldest friend Leanne. Spending time with Leanne’s gorgeous twin Tom is just a bonus…

But life has a way of tripping you up when you least expect it, and Poppy soon has to decide where her priorities lie… With new friends, a new career and a new romance, can Poppy keep everyone happy, or is everything about to tumble down around her?

A laugh-out-loud story about friendship, second chances, and new love, perfect for fans of Lindsey Kelk, Marian Keyes and Jane Costello.

If you’re anything like me, as soon as you read the title of this book, a familiar song began to invade your head, with its upbeat rhythm no one can resist. The mere sight of this book made me happy, with its inspiring title and joyful colors. I think it’s the first time a book has such an effect on my mood before I even opened it!

Poppy has always had a plan. Ten years of study later, she’s about to open the door to the life she has been dreaming of, with her best friend and her boyfriend by her side. Except… The door is ajar and as soon as she approaches, it is slammed shut in her face! She is stuck on the other side without the key. Have you ever felt that way? I know I did! I had big plans and my future figured out, I knew exactly what I wanted and how to get it. I did everything; the long nights of studying, the almost non-existent social life, the extra work, I embraced the academic path and thought it was where I belonged. Poppy’s story is my story. This is why I felt she was a long-time friend from the beginning. I could see myself in her, in her youthful hope and those eyes sparkling with the anticipation of her vision of life coming true. The author described this student life bubble so well I was back in my dorm.

Poppy is such an easy character to love. She is 29, she has a complicated but somehow happy family life, she knows life through books and research, she has this sweet gullibility that comes with first-row students I know so well. Yep, I was the first of my class and lots of others thought it came naturally when I spent my nights studying like crazy! But Poppy is also so relatable, she is smart but in an endearing way, not in a “I’m crushing you all with my super IQ” way. No one likes those girls!

But then, Poppy is thrown away into real life with a rather nasty kick in the butt! Bye bye the cosy university, with its big safe walls, job opportunities and dream life. From here, we meet jobless and hopeless Poppy, with a broken heart and no opportunities on sight.

Sad, right? Well, not with this book! No matter what you find between those pages, humor is at all the right places!! The only tears you’ll get from Don’t Stop Me Now will be from laughing too hard!

Poppy is a typical girl, she wallows, she doesn’t want to get out, she thinks her life is over. Then she unwillingly moves her bottom and, miracle, there’s life outside of her narrow idea of what her future would look like! No, she doesn’t see the best in her situation, no, she doesn’t like being back at her mother’s at 29, no, she doesn’t play the wise woman and believe there is a bright side. She is at a loss, she takes the hits and discovers the joys of unemployment. They call it adulting.

Obviously, I’m reassessing that viewpoint now as a twenty-nine-year-old standing in a onesie in my mum’s kitchen.

I think there is no real age to grow up and find yourself. They say after high school you just magically become an adult, and it’s true on paper, but it takes so much more to discover who you are and what you want, and that is what this book is about: expanding your horizons, breathing and stepping out of your comfort zone, kicking open doors that you thought were never there, and just get out there to just “be”. We’re lucky to get on this journey with Poppy and I better warn you: be prepared to chuckle, laugh out loud and choke on your crisps, because Poppy is the perfect example of so many young adults right now. She’s a breath of fresh air. Her reactions, her sweetness, her doubts, everything in her makes you fall for her and her attitude starts to change as she realizes the world is bigger than what she thought.

Poppy grows in front of our eyes and her journey to find herself is very inspiring, it left me wanting more for myself, and it reminded me to not settle for less. Friendships, work, and even romance help our main character shape her new life, but the main focus is always on her, and thank the Book Good that Poppy is not the kind of girl who waits for her prince to save her. She’s a modern princess, looking for her place in the world and a good coffee place! Don’t get me wrong, a bit of romance is always a plus, but it is refreshing to see a protagonist fend for herself instead of getting the easy way with a “love cures all problems.”

From now on I’m going to rediscover my home city inch by inch, profiterole by profiterole, macaron by macaron… my favourites!

I loved the message that comes with this story, that opening your eyes to look around you can make you so much happier than any dream you ever had for yourself. Because sometimes life’s dream for you is bigger and brighter than what you hoped for yourself. Different, but so right. We are pressured to succeed, academically, professionally, socially, by people and society’s standards and it can lead to disasters, people losing their way to fit into a mold they don’t belong to. This book reminds us there are so many ways to get where we need to be, we all need to be reminded each path is different but worth walking.

Don’t Stop Me Now is a hilarious tale of how life’s road and its bumps can lead you right where you belong.

I would like to thank Bookouture for offering me the opportunity to partake in this blog tour. I would also thank the author for donating a percentage of the sales from the book to mental health charities to help young people. Thank you very much.

Colleen Coleman is an Irish-Canadian novelist. She is the winner of the much-coveted Novelicious Undiscovered People’s Choice Award launched to find the next ‘chick-lit star’. She spent over ten years working as a teacher of English and Philosophy before finally taking a deep breath, scrunching her eyes shut, putting her pen to paper and vowing not to lift it again until she wrote the words The End. As a result, her first novel was born. Colleen lives between London, Ireland and Cyprus with her very patient husband and very, very chatty twin daughters. Don’t Stop Me Now is her first book and will be released in March.

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Want to know more about the book and the author? Check out the rest of the blog tour!

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