The Big Event: A Great Read From a New Voice in Chick Lit

The Big Event by Anne John - Ligali is a wonderful short story connecting social media friends at a Christmas party. This brilliant narration paints a very beautiful and vivid picture of friends and their mini-backstories in a gorgeous setting that is brought to life through great world building and sensory details. The story divulges the reader deep into the noise of the champagne corks flying and the sea of talking heads who can even smell the lavender or dance with the music. The short happenings in the party are highly engaging and distinguishes real and pretended images of people in a social circle. 

Constance socialises at a ballroom party and her online friend meets Stan Lambert; with whom she had become friends five years ago on Twitter over sharing common interests. Stan is a writer, who had annoyingly forced Constance to buy his book. After reading it, she became a friend, left positive reviews and they began to share personal stories. Next, she bumps into a few more of her friends and to me, each one I could visualise so well because of the clear descriptions Anne has given in this narrative. The most loved part is the contradiction of character and what Constance has learned about them online (which does happen), but it’s sort of quirky and funny in places. Karmel and Jagger too are worth to be liked, and especially how cleverly the writer connects this Jagger character to a well-known song due to his inept dance moves. LOL!

The Big Event is a short burst of glitz, glamour and social media updates, that keeps you going until the end, and ends very nicely. The dynamics of the ballroom party connecting the old friends and their lives is simply a pleasure to read. 

The mix of past and present stories of the characters is sure to recoil the readers into this series of short stories. 

Anne John-Ligali is a talented new writer who has shared her vibrant imagination and that of the social lives of her character’s which is captured in this amazing piece of writing. 

The Weekend Spa break is the second part of this story which is a much awaited read.