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Meet Prinny, Chelsea, and Diana. Prinny is the owner of Cosmos, a shop that sells crystals, potions, candles, and hope. It's also a place where no one turns down a little extra-special cocktail that can work as a romance potion or heal a broken heart. But Prinny is in love with her married lawyer, and she'll need nothing short of magic to forget about him. Chelsea works as a living statue at tourist sites around Washington, DC. It's a thankless job, but it helps pay the rent. That and her part-time job at Cosmos.
Twenty years ago, Allie Denty was the pretty one and her best friend Olivia Pelham was the smart one. Throughout high school, they were inseparable...until a vicious rumor about Olivia - a rumor too close to the truth - ended their friendship. Now, on the eve of their 20th high school reunion, Allie, a temp worker, finds herself suddenly single, a little chubby, and feeling old.
From the New York Times best-selling author of Hope In a Jar, Secrets of a Shoe Addict, and Shoe Addicts Anonymous, comes a novel about old rivalries, deep secrets, and the three things all women wish they were.
Sometimes life doesn't take you in the direction you expect. Colleen Bradley is married with a teenage son, a modest business repurposing and reselling antiques, and longtime fear that she was not her husband's first choice. When she decides to take a road trip down the east coast to check out antique auctions for her business, she also has a secret ulterior motive. Her one-woman mission for peace of mind is thrown slightly off course when 16-year-old Tamara becomes her co-pilot.
As far as Gemma is concerned, her days of dating are over. In fact, it’s her job to cater other peoples’ dates, and that’s just fine by her. At 37, she has her own business, working as a private chef, and her life feels full. She’s got six steady clients that keep her hands full. For Gemma, cooking is predictable. Recipes are certain. Use good ingredients, follow the directions, and you are assured success. Life, on the other hand, is full of variables. So when Gemma’s takes an unexpected turn on a road she always thought was straight and narrow, she must face her past.
After being together for 10 years, Sylvie and Dan have all the trimmings of a happy life and marriage; they have a comfortable home, fulfilling jobs, and beautiful twin girls and communicate so seamlessly, they finish each other's sentences. However, a trip to the doctor projects they will live another 68 years together, and panic sets in. They never expected "until death do us part" to mean seven decades. In the name of marriage survival, they quickly concoct a plan to keep their relationship fresh and exciting.
Meet Prinny, Chelsea, and Diana. Prinny is the owner of Cosmos, a shop that sells crystals, potions, candles, and hope. It's also a place where no one turns down a little extra-special cocktail that can work as a romance potion or heal a broken heart. But Prinny is in love with her married lawyer, and she'll need nothing short of magic to forget about him. Chelsea works as a living statue at tourist sites around Washington, DC. It's a thankless job, but it helps pay the rent. That and her part-time job at Cosmos.
Twenty years ago, Allie Denty was the pretty one and her best friend Olivia Pelham was the smart one. Throughout high school, they were inseparable...until a vicious rumor about Olivia - a rumor too close to the truth - ended their friendship. Now, on the eve of their 20th high school reunion, Allie, a temp worker, finds herself suddenly single, a little chubby, and feeling old.
From the New York Times best-selling author of Hope In a Jar, Secrets of a Shoe Addict, and Shoe Addicts Anonymous, comes a novel about old rivalries, deep secrets, and the three things all women wish they were.
Sometimes life doesn't take you in the direction you expect. Colleen Bradley is married with a teenage son, a modest business repurposing and reselling antiques, and longtime fear that she was not her husband's first choice. When she decides to take a road trip down the east coast to check out antique auctions for her business, she also has a secret ulterior motive. Her one-woman mission for peace of mind is thrown slightly off course when 16-year-old Tamara becomes her co-pilot.
As far as Gemma is concerned, her days of dating are over. In fact, it’s her job to cater other peoples’ dates, and that’s just fine by her. At 37, she has her own business, working as a private chef, and her life feels full. She’s got six steady clients that keep her hands full. For Gemma, cooking is predictable. Recipes are certain. Use good ingredients, follow the directions, and you are assured success. Life, on the other hand, is full of variables. So when Gemma’s takes an unexpected turn on a road she always thought was straight and narrow, she must face her past.
After being together for 10 years, Sylvie and Dan have all the trimmings of a happy life and marriage; they have a comfortable home, fulfilling jobs, and beautiful twin girls and communicate so seamlessly, they finish each other's sentences. However, a trip to the doctor projects they will live another 68 years together, and panic sets in. They never expected "until death do us part" to mean seven decades. In the name of marriage survival, they quickly concoct a plan to keep their relationship fresh and exciting.
Can you ever really know if love is true? And if it is, should you stop at anything to get it? Two decades ago, Erin Edwards was sure she’d already found the love of her life: Nate Lawson. Her first love. The one with whom she shared everything--dreams of the future, of children, plans for forever. The one she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. Until one terrible night when Erin made a mistake Nate could not forgive and left her to mourn the relationship she could never forget or get over.
Thirty-seven-year-old Ramie Phillips has led a very successful life. She made her fortune, and now she hobnobs with the very rich and occasionally the semifamous, and she enjoys luxuries she only dreamed of as a middle-class kid growing up in Potomac, Maryland. But despite it all, she can't ignore the fact that she isn't necessarily happy. In fact lately Ramie has begun to feel more than a little empty.
Four different women. One common shoe size. And a shared lust for fabulous footwear. In this sparkling novel, the wife of a controlling politician, a debt-ridden eBay addict, an agoraphobic phone sex operator, and a nanny for the family from hell (who barely knows a sole from a heel but who will do anything to get out of the house) meet on Tuesday nights to trade shoes. In the process, they form friendships that will help each of them to triumph over her problems, from secret pasts to blackmail, bankrupcy, and dating.
It's been over a decade since Nora left her hometown of Scupper Island, Maine, and very seldom looked back. She's carved out a successful life in Boston, where no one knows her as the awkward girl with the delinquent sister and the dad who left, but a not-as-dramatic-as-it-sounds brush with death has her taking stock of her life. Inspired to reconnect with her prickly mother and snarky teenage niece, Nora returns home for the summer, where she's forced to face the people she's spent the last ten years trying to avoid.
Abbey Lahey is a married, harried working mother of two, struggling to make ends meet in a blue-collar suburb of Philadelphia. When a tumble down a Nordstrom escalator lands her in an alternate reality, Abbey finds herself happily married to the one who got away - a dashing Philly blueblood she met briefly years earlier - and living a Cinderella life of privilege and luxury.
Grace Stanton’s life as a rising media star and beloved lifestyle blogger takes a surprising turn when she catches her husband cheating and torpedoes his pricey sports car straight into the family swimming pool. Grace suddenly finds herself locked out of her palatial home, checking account, and even the blog she has worked so hard to develop in her signature style. Moving in with her widowed mother, who owns and lives above a rundown beach bar called The Sandbox, is less than ideal. So is attending court-mandated weekly "divorce recovery" therapy sessions with three other women and one man for whom betrayal seems to be the only commonality. When their “divorce coach” starts to act suspiciously, they decide to start having their own Wednesday "Ladies' Night" sessions at The Sandbox, and the unanticipated bonds that develop lead the members of the group to try and find closure in ways they never imagined. Can Grace figure out a new way home and discover how strong she needs to be to get there?
For Charlotte Crawford, the worst part about being dumped after 20 years of marriage is that her husband, Jack, doesn't want another woman; he just doesn't want her. Forty-two and clueless, Charlotte is a fish out of water in a dating pool teeming with losers. Just when she thinks she's finally put her failed marriage behind her, it comes back to bite her in the ass...hard. Without warning, Charlotte finds herself staring down the barrel of a future she wouldn't (she would totally) wish on her worst enemy.
In a dazzling, delightful new novel that's quintessential Emily Giffin, the number one New York Times best-selling author of Something Borrowed, Where We Belong, and The One & Only introduces a pair of 30-something sisters who find themselves asking: If love, marriage, and children don't arrive in the usual order, which comes first?
Natalie is a Bloomingdale's salesgirl mooning over her lawyer ex-boyfriend, who's engaged to someone else after just two months. Felicia has been quietly in love with her boss for 17 years and has one night to finally make the feeling mutual. Andie is a private detective who specializes in gathering evidence on cheating husbands - a skill she unfortunately learned from her own life - and lands a case that may restore her faith in true love.
Lacey Terwilliger's shock and humiliation over her husband's philandering prompt her to add some bonus material to Mike's company newsletter: stunning Technicolor descriptions of the special brand of "administrative support" his receptionist gives him. The detailed mass e-mail to Mike's family, friends, and clients blows up in her face, and before one can say "instant urban legend", Lacey has become the pariah of her small Kentucky town and a media punch line....
Come hell or high water, Emmy Jo Massey will have a wedding. After three generations of Massey women with children out of wedlock, she wants the whole town of Hickory, Texas, to witness the legitimacy of her union with Logan Grady. But dream weddings aren't cheap. So she accepts a highly lucrative stint as a home health assistant to retired realtor, and town recluse, Seth Thomas - a decision her great-grandmother Tandy is dead-set against.
When Emma Montague left the strict confines of upper-crust British life for New York, she felt sure it would make her happy. Away from her parents and expectations, she felt liberated, throwing herself into Manhattan life replete with a high-paying job, a gorgeous apartment, and a string of successful boyfriends. But the cutthroat world of finance and relentless pursuit of more began to take its toll. This wasn't the life she wanted either.
From Beth Harbison, the New York Times best-selling author of When in Doubt, Add Butter and Shoe Addicts Anonymous, comes Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger, a delightful new novel that will make you look at second chances in a whole new way.
Ten years ago, Quinn Barton was on her way to the altar to marry Burke Morrison, her high school sweetheart, when something derailed her. Rather, someone derailed her - the Best Man who at the last minute begged her to reconsider the marriage. He told her that Burke had been cheating on her. For a long time. Quinn, stunned, hurt, and confused, struggled with the obligation of fulfilling her guests’ expectations - providing a wedding - and running for her life.
She chose running. With the Best Man. Who happened to be Burke’s brother, Frank.
That relationship didn’t work either. How could it, when Quinn had been engaged to, in love with, Frank’s brother? Quinn opts for neither, and, instead, spends the next 17 years working in her family’s Middleburg, Virginia, bridal shop, Talk of the Gown, where she subconsciously does penance for the disservice she did to marriage.
But when the two men return to town for another wedding, old anger, hurt, and passion resurface. Just because you’ve traded the good guy for the bad guy for no guy doesn’t mean you have to stay away from love for the rest of your life, does it? Told with Beth Harbison's flair for humor and heart, Chose the Wrong Guy will keep you guessing and make you believe in the possibilities of love.
I listened to and loved Driving With the Top Down so I took a shot at this one; wish I hadn't done that. I gave up on this one after an excruciatingly long seven hours. Even when broken down into hour long segments even those seemed to drag on intermediately and in excruciating detail about a woman who even according to her lives a boring in a small boring town. Well now that's just great, so glad you decided to share it with us but I could have done without the insomnia cure.
Beth Harbison is usually an excellent writer and Orlagh Cassidy's has a smooth pleasant voice and does a good job with this audiobook. Though in retrospect that might have been part of the problem; her voice was so smooth that it further flattened the story. I enjoyed Driving With the Top Down enough to take a shot at another of her novels on audio but this one ain't it.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
I truly love Beth Harbison books, but this one seemed to drag a bit, slow. I will still read others of her work though!
Another book I am in love with. it made laugh and even cry a little. very good book....
I usually love Beth Harbison books but I guess I favor the ones that have multiple main characters. I wanted to hear more of a story but this book mostly focused on the character's inner emotional progress more than anything. Not that it was bad just not what I feel like I typically hear in a Beth Harbison book.
My Review:
Overall.... 3.50
Performance... 3.50
Story.... 3.50
Beth Harbison's books tend to fall more under women's fiction than my normal straight romance genres that I like to read, but every once in a while, I grab one on audio for something different. I absolutely adore the title of this one which is definitely what grabbed me and the story sounded intriguing.
This book is okay. It's really about Quinn and where her life has gone...or hasn't gone...in the last ten years since she left Burke at the altar. Since the notorious weekend, she has seen neither Burke (jilted groom) or Frank (best man and Burke's brother that she spent the weekend in Vegas with after the jilting) although neither has ever truly left her thoughts. Even though she hasn't seen them, she's still in the same place she always was. In fact, very little about her life has changed in 10 years. She's stuck in a rut which is made more obvious when the two guys come to town to help their grandmother close her life there.
There's another character to this story...Quinn's gay best friend, Glenn, who also grew up with the other three although he wasn't in their circle of friends then. He sees Quinn struggle and sets out to change her perspective with a 30 day challenge. Every day, he gives her an assignment to do something that isn't normal for her. He sees that she's stagnating and confused and wants to help shake things up for her.
This book isn't all that long...8 hours on audio, but it did go on for too long with the amount of story there. It got a bit old to listen to Quinn go on and on in her head about what happened with Burke and how she should have handled it all better back then. With two hours left on the audio, I actually considered DNF'ing it because I was getting so fed up with her. But I stuck with it and in the end, I was glad that I did.
There are no winners here because all three of these people are entwined in each other's lives and they are ALL very emotionally involved, regardless of the fact that it's been 10 years. I definitely had a favorite with who I thought Quinn should be with, but even with that, there really wasn't a bad choice here. In fact, even Quinn choosing neither guy would have been okay, too. NO SPOILERS HERE. The point of the story was that life moves on and she needed to move past that event in her life and find happiness in her choice...in whichever way possible.
Normally, I am a HUGE Orlagh Cassidy fan, but there were a few issues with her narration on this one. Toward the end of the book, the voices kept getting crossed and it was hard to tell who was speaking which lines. Even the main characters, especially Quinn got lost in the other voices in those final scenes which is really bad and distracting at those pivotal moments in the book.
Overall, I'm not sad that I took the time to listen to this one, but it definitely isn't one I would ever listen to again. Like I said, it was okay...and sometimes okay is good enough for a little escape.
What was most disappointing about Beth Harbison’s story?
Quinn Barton is perhaps the weakest, whiniest, most ridiculous character I have ever read. I have enjoyed so many of Beth Harbison's books, that this one was a real disappointment. On no planet would this brother vs. brother vs. female lead ever ring true or be accepted by any thinking reader. But it's the wishy washy back and forth that is really too much to take. If not for the wonderful voice of Orlagh Cassidy, this book would have been completely worthless.