The Shelf

Who would have thought that a book about being on a reality TV show after being dumped on TV would be such an interesting book topic? But once I picked this up, I really couldn’t put it down!

I love that Helly Acton dreamt up an entire Tv show around a devastating moment in life and turned it around to something positive. Having seven women in a house at a low point in their lives could have gone completely horribly, but the characters that Helly wrote gelled together so well that there wasn’t a lot of drama but you still rooted for each and every woman in The Shelf house. 

I loved how she integrated social media and technology into the house with The Wall and The Tracker, and used them to show how they would be interacted with if they were included in a real reality TV show. I also love how the women started off by being obsessed with what people thought of them, to shouting at the Wall to realising that it wasn’t a true reflection of what people thought.

I didn’t want to put this book down, and didn’t know who I wanted to be evicted each time there was an eviction as I loved each one of the characters. I also liked how at the end of the book, everyone’s happiness wasn’t measured by whether they were in a relationship or not, it was whether they had met their goals. And I also love that the theme throughout this book wasn’t that you need to be in a relationship to be happy, but that you need to love yourself first to be happy and don’t rush into being with someone who ultimately isn’t right for you just because you think that you’re running out of time. 

I can’t wait to read Helly’s next book now.