Sasha never intended to be a temp: "My school wanted us to go to university, as though that would, aside from keeping them up in the league tables, be the magic formula. "You don’t want to end up typing for a living," they said. So I went to university, got the degree and bingo, here I am typing for a living anyway." 

          It’s a year since she left university. After six months travelling with chinless boyfriend Matthew, they’ve ended up in a house owned Sasha’s oldest and best friend–and former boy-band sex-god–Ben Cameron, along with layabout Craig, housing advice worker Donna, and city-type Tania, who writes her name on milk cartons, and throws a fit if someone chucks out her flat champagne. "Between us we have notched up five degrees, two careers, one ex-career, three dope habits, two years on the dole and, so far this year, sixteen jobs, fourteen of them done by me."

           Alongside hilarious tips and observations on work life–including step-by-step instructions for holidaying PAs on how to make their temporary replacement’s life hell and how to get fit by filing inefficiently, thinking and taking up smoking in a non-smoking office–this clever, witty, well-constructed novel also packs in a nail-biting, page-turner of a plot, some shocking and moving bits, revenge, romance and a sly poke at all those trashy novels aimed at twenty-somethings. "Giles or Luke? Penny couldn’t decide. All she knew was that being a successful model/editor/advertising executive/film producer/private detective was not proving to be as fulfilling as she had expected. What do you do when you’ve got everything but all you want is love?".