My Best Friend Has Issues - Laura Marney

Alison, Scottish and friendless, has moved to Barcelona to change her life. Still recovering from a severe bout of glandular fever that not only left her organs vulnerable but also caused a dramatic and attractive weight loss, Alison casts the events around her as imaginary postcards to her former 'best' friends, who are lumpen, hateful, and trapped in dead-end lives back home in Cumbernauld, near Glasgow.
Alison hopes for glamour, and an end to her virginity. When her initial search for accommodation that is neither ludicrously expensive or disgustingly filthy is aborted by the discovery of a blood-covered body on a flight of stairs, Alison flees, certain (for some unknown reason) that she'll be charged with the murder of a man she'd never met. Rescued by American heiress Chloe, Alison discovers a very different life - Chloe allows her to stay, rent-free, is generous with her possessions, and asks only that Alison water maria (her colony of dope plants) and tend to her dog Gita (and her eight new puppies).
Leaving aside the medical inaccuracies (long-term liver impairment is not a complication of mononucleosis/Epstein-Barr virus/glandular fever, a fact easily checked), My Best Friend Has Issues is a very odd book. The cover portrays not only a pair of tanned legs with ankle floaties and high heels against a blue-skies-and-green-water backdrop, but also the tag line "If you suffer from giggle incontinence, beware!" I grant you this is something on a par with 'romp' as an indicator that no humour lies within, and in that I was not betrayed. However I think I could be forgiven for believing that My Best Friend Has Issues was at least a fairly light hearted holiday read.
It's not, though it's hard to say what it actually is, as Marney seems unsure about her target genre. Certainly not light (or any) comedy, chick lit or romance, there are elements of coming of age (that don't come off), an interesting but half-hearted revenge, shades of SWF in the unequal and increasingly bizarre relationship between the women, and a really unexpected, disjointed and shocking (not in a positive way) epilogue that made no sense to me at all. The epilogue reverses several aspects of both Alison and Chloe but, unlike well-crafted twists, there was no 'a-ha!' moment wherein puzzling pieces fell in to place. I found no hint of the twist in the preceding novel, and it served merely to add to my dissatisfaction with the novel as a whole.
And if you think I'm being too harsh, try this sample from the text on for size:

Weeks ago, resisting the temptation to invite the buck-toothed Frank into my hospital bed, I'd decided that the first man I slept with would be gorgeous and sexy. Was Ewan a worthy recipient of my favours? The criterion, like my gloriously intact hymen, was tight.

Need I say more? - Alex