February's book club pick was one I'd not heard of, but it won the vote so it's what we went with! I guess the fun of a book club is getting to read books you wouldn't choose usually, and for me Preloved fit that criteria. Following my New Year's resolution of not buying books new in 2024, I once more headed to eBay, and ordered my copy of Preloved.
Gwen is in her thirties and she's just been made redundant. She's recently single, she's not really a people person and she's not really sure what she wants to do next, so she decides to volunteer at a charity shop. Preloved follows her time there, peeps into the relationships she forms, and her journey to finding herself.
A lot of Gwen's tale aligned with myself and my own experiences, and her outlook on things mirrored mine quite often, which made me interested enough to explore Gwen's world with her.
Preloved has what I call the Gwen chapters, and the other chapters; the other chapters are ones which focus on various items - a t-shirt, a pair of shoes, a camera - and their 'lives' before they ended up in the charity shop. I can understand why they were included, but they became a hard NO for me. These chapters distracted from the main plot, and I felt it unnecessary to have one following every chapter of Gwen's. I actually think I would've enjoyed this book a lot more if the sole focus was on the Gwen story!
Despite not enjoying the inclusion of the other chapters, I thought Preloved was an enjoyable enough read, even though it's not really my kind of thing. It was a bit of a light and airy chick-lit type of book that never really quite delivered as much depth as I'd really like. However, it was well written and offered a quick and easy read, albeit one that won't be particularly memorable to me.
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