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Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early 20s, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom - or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it's her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max - this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA president sees her as the "wisest" candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colors of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.
When Amanda Gallo, fresh from the backwater of local TV, lands the job of her dreams at FAIR News - the coveted morning anchor slot - she's finally made it: a six-figure salary, a wardrobe allowance, plenty of on-air face time, and a chance to realize her dreams, not to mention buy herself lunch. But she finds her journalistic ideals shredded as she struggles to keep up with the issues in a ratings-crazed madhouse.
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life - except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the fault lines begin to open: on the block, at her job, especially in her marriage.
Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early 20s, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom - or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it's her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max - this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA president sees her as the "wisest" candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colors of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.
When Amanda Gallo, fresh from the backwater of local TV, lands the job of her dreams at FAIR News - the coveted morning anchor slot - she's finally made it: a six-figure salary, a wardrobe allowance, plenty of on-air face time, and a chance to realize her dreams, not to mention buy herself lunch. But she finds her journalistic ideals shredded as she struggles to keep up with the issues in a ratings-crazed madhouse.
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life - except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the fault lines begin to open: on the block, at her job, especially in her marriage.
Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California; a father he loathes in Brooklyn; and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway. He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with 20 years ago, and this discovery will send him off course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband, David, has left her, and her career has stagnated.
It's Christmas, and, for the first time in years, the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew's elder daughter - who is usually off saving the world - will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. But Olivia, a doctor, is coming home only because she has to. Having just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, she's been told she must stay in quarantine for a week...and so, too, should her family.
At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find...repressed hopes and dreams...moments of unexpected joy...someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband.... As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this....
Sunshine Mackenzie truly is living the dream. A lifestyle guru for the modern age, Sunshine is beloved by millions of people who tune in to her YouTube cooking show, and millions more scour her website for recipes, wisdom, and her enticing suggestions for how to curate a perfect life. She boasts a series of New York Times best-selling cookbooks, a devoted architect husband, and a reputation for sincerity and kindness - Sunshine seems to have it all. But she's hiding who she really is.
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman. It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy - an unexpected but not unhappy development in the 38-year-old's life.
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her - feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
Laura hails from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, born into old money, drifting aimlessly into her early 30s. One weekend in 1981 she meets Jefferson. The two sleep together. He vanishes. And Laura realizes she's pregnant. Enter: Emma.
In the well-heeled milieu of New York's Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. And although her wealth and connections put her in the center of this world, she refuses to conform to its gossip-fueled culture. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women.
The irascible A. J. Fikry, owner of Island Books - the only bookstore on Alice Island - has already lost his wife. Now his most prized possession, a rare book, has been stolen from right under his nose in the most embarrassing of circumstances. The store itself, it seems, will be next to go. One night upon closing, he discovers a toddler in his children’s section with a note from her mother pinned to her Elmo doll: I want Maya to grow up in a place with books and among people who care about such kinds of things. I love her very much, but I can no longer take care of her.
Nightingale Books, nestled on the main street in an idyllic little village, is a dream come true for book lovers - a cozy haven and welcoming getaway for the literary-minded locals. But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open after her beloved father's death, and the temptation to sell is getting stronger. The property developers are circling, yet Emilia's loyal customers have become like family, and she can't imagine breaking the promise she made to her father to keep the store alive.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.
Young Jane Young's heroine is Aviva Grossman, an ambitious congressional intern in Florida who makes the life-changing mistake of having an affair with her boss - who is beloved, admired, successful, and very married - and blogging about it. When the affair comes to light, the congressman doesn't take the fall, but Aviva does, and her life is over before it hardly begins. She becomes a late-night talk show punchline; she is slut shamed and considered a blight on politics in general. How does one go on after this?
In Aviva's case, she sees no way out but to change her name and move to a remote town in Maine. She tries to start over as a wedding planner, to be smarter about her life, and to raise her daughter to be strong and confident. But when, at the urging of others, she decides to run for public office herself, that long ago mistake trails her via the Internet like a scarlet A. For in our age, Google guarantees that the past is never, ever truly past, that everything you've done will live on for everyone to know about for all eternity. And it's only a matter of time until Aviva's daughter, Ruby, finds out who her mother was and is and must decide whether she can still respect her.
I was bored and annoyed and bored by this. I slogged thru first 4 chapters & then acted on my NEw Years resolution to DNF books that aren't for me . No more dutiful death marches to end of an unfulfilling book.
Took too long to get going. I didn't want to spend another second with the character who narrated the early chapters. It wasn't funny or charming or endearing. So I bailed.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
Would you try another book from Gabrielle Zevin and/or Karen White?
Maybe, from Gabrielle Zevin, I'm still not finished yet, but if the writing is a little more creative, it's possible. Karen White, however, is fantastic! Her narration is the main thing that has kept me from giving in on this novel.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
I haven't been able to make it to the end yet. I go back to it, and listen to the repeated "she said, she said" for every single character, for every single time they speak. One reviewer stated that she thought it was "lazy writing" and I really have to agree. My 1st grade nephew knows more ways to describe when someone is speaking or has spoken. I listen for as long as I possibly can, but each "she said" grows more and more grating, and when I can't take it anymore, I stop listening for a few weeks, then go back again.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
Karen White's narration saved it!
Any additional comments?
The use of a thesaurus would be a game changer!
1 of 2 people found this review helpful
Any additional comments?
It always blows my mind when novels that were likely written a while ago are so prophetic. A story about an intern who sleeps with a married congressman could not be more relevant in today's deluge of sexual misconduct cases, and how it destroys the lives of women while their predator's careers remain relatively untarnished. Aviva/Jane is a wonderful sympathetic character and love the way the author so brilliantly captured Jewish culture in South Florida and the complicated mother/daughter dynamic that exists within that. A story that was over a little too soon ... I could have used a little more time with these characters.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful
Overall rating: 3 and 1/2 stars.
This is feather-light, fun reading for when you need a break from current events and more serious books, and don't want to have to think too hard.
On the one hand, as my husband (who listened to it with me) summarizes, it's shallow, superficial, childish, and silly. As the cover art suggests, characters are cartoonish and incompletely drawn; think stick-figure sketches, or caricatures at most, not fully realized portraits. Also, the story is more than a little preposterous (e.g., Who would be so traumatized by scandal that she would go so far as to legally change her name and hide so completely from the world that not even her family knows where she is, much less that she has a child...and then expose herself by running for public office?). Plot holes abound, and the author's stylistic choices are often very questionable (e.g., repeating He said, he said, he said, repeatedly; tossing in incongruous elements of magical realism like an invisible talking parrot).
Nevertheless, it's oddly addictive. I almost never finish a truly bad book, and I could not let this one go until I reached the end. Some of the author's wacky choices are quite creative, as in Aviva's final chapter, which is told in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure story. The author's unfailingly perky style is perfectly suited to the material; she reminds me of an overly caffeinated, chipper-cheerful Hope Davis. Her high energy helped propel the story along, and made it an easy listen.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
2 of 6 people found this review helpful
...thoughtful and so true. Not for one second boring and narration is excellent. What a treat.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
I really liked this book. I first thought it was going to be a mostly humorous book, but found it to have a much deeper story, more guts. Don’t get me wrong.. I laughed out loud or chuckled to myself plenty of times throughout, but it also held my interest because of what Aviva went through and rose above. Plus, Ruby was an enjoyable character. I know it’s fiction, but I applaud a side story of a smart, young person being raised correctly by a single mom! A quick, fun read/listen.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
There are some acute and uncomfortable social observations in this story, specifically how the online media can damage and / or destroy a person's life. For those who loved "The Storied Life of AJ Fikry", this is not that book. There is humor and great characters; the author uses a different storytelling style for each section. I did prefer the first chapters which were first third person narratives; the e-mails of the third section and the "choose your adventure" of the final section weren't as successful IMHO. Still, an entertaining and thought-provoking story. ( FYI, check out Monica Lewinsky's TED talk on cyber-bullying. You will never see the Clinton debacle in the same way). Narrator was good, especially when voicing Rachel Shapiro / chapter one.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
YES (see below)
What did you like best about this story?
My mother and grandmother are elected officials and I'm currently volunteering on a congressional campaign (for a woman) and this was just so emotionally accurate. Although there were parts where you had to suspend your disbelief for sure, the writing was so able to capture the emotion of mother/daughter relationships, elections, public perceptions, and just what it's like to be a woman. i literally could not stop listening to this book and finished it in about two days. the ending made me cry, and i can't remember the last time that happened.
Which scene was your favorite?
any number of ruby's emails, but my favorite line was probably "i don't know if it's normal in my country for event planners to run for mayor."
i also LOVED the chapter in which ruby forges an extremely unlikely friendship.
If you could rename Young Jane Young, what would you call it?
"i don't know if it's normal in my country for event planners to fur mayor" :)
0 of 2 people found this review helpful
I was only able to give this book 4/5 stars, as the last 1/5th of the book was really lacking. I enjoyed the narration immensely. The story is told in 5 parts. First from the main character's mom (hilarious), the second from the main character, the third from the main character's daughter (by far the most endearing), the 4th from the congressman's wife, and the final section in the 3rd person wrapping everything up with a recap from beginning to end. This is where my criticism lies - in the wrap up - not tidy (great) but redundant without much new information to really make it interesting.
That said, I found the listen very light-hearted, and thought the narrator was spot on in delivery. A decent summer read.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful
I loved the characters. Very well done. Each had faults and good qualities. Just like real life. Book was funny. And believable. Living in DC I can see this playing out in real life. I sure many readers have regrets from the past. Or wish to have a re-do from some aspect of life. While not possible the book showed the possibility of a deciding to keep moving forward no matter what. Loved Jane!
0 of 2 people found this review helpful