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I very much enjoyed ""''A Life Lived Ridiculously""'', for the most part. Despite, or maybe because of, her idiosyncrasies, Maxine is a thoroughly likeable character. Her slightly over-bearing parents, especially their willingness to see her married off, remind me slightly of my own. This gives the book a slight edge of realism that isn't apparent in many chick-lit style novels, helped by Maxine not having time to spend hours meeting friends over long lunches when she should be working.

What endeared me to Maxine, - and the book as a whole, to me was that we see so much of her life. There are none of the huge jumps over the boring parts that often happen in the genre. We see Maxine at work and her studies and when she's rearranging her flat. She fails to see Sam's attraction to her at first and vacillates over whether to give him money he seems to need. Her suspicions that all isn't well creep up on her slowly and she has moments of doubt when mutual friends don't immediately agree with her point of view. Such natural events and feelings, but so often missing from chick-lit novels and they help to balance out the stranger events like misplacing her car and spending hours messing with lamps when she should be sleeping.

As enjoyable a read as ''A Life Lived Ridiculously'' was, a couple of aspects took the enjoyment away. Firstly, the ending wasn't in keeping with the rest of the novel, as if the author was trying to balance things out for Maxine a little. More of an issue for me, however, was the editing, which let a number of mis-spellings get through, such as ""''dozed"" '' being constantly spelt as ""''dosed"" '' among others. Maybe I'm more of a stickler for spelling than some, but each time I saw one of these errors, it interrupted the flow of my reading. At a couple of points, Maxine wondered how anyone could possibly collapse, but some of the spelling left me wondering how anyone ""''dosed off""''.

It's a shame about these flaws, as otherwise ''A Life Lived Ridiculously'' had the potential to be an excellent book. It may fit nicely into a chick-lit genre I'm not really the ideal audience for, but I still enjoyed it. The edge of realism of Maxine's life, so beautifully counter balanced by the strange behaviours of her O. C. D. OCD made for an interesting and enticing combination and if the editing at least can be improved in later editions, this is certainly going to be a book worth having a look at.

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