A clever and entertaining read, with amusing, unexpected twists and a sturdy female protagonist.
A down-on-her-luck developer of products for the film and gaming industry leaves Los Angeles for a job in Wisconsin in Sipos’ spirited satire.
Forty-year-old Jaycee Grayson, fresh from a stint in the Betty Ford rehab center after having been fired from her job at a big-name Hollywood studio, is about to embark on a new adventure. Her older sister Meredith Grayson-O’Cochlain, a high-powered attorney, has negotiated a contract for Jaycee to be the new executive producer and vice president of global entertainment at Wonderful Girls, a successful manufacturer of lifelike dolls that reflect individual personalities and aspirations. The company, run primarily by women, was founded by the now semi-retired Happy Lindstrom. It has recently been sold for a fortune to a Japanese company but still maintains its headquarters in Littleburgh, Wisconsin. “Pulled by this strange and wonderful concept of female unity,” Jaycee heads to Wisconsin, where she discovers a workplace brimming with an intoxicating sweetness that belies the back-stabbing manipulations of Wonderful Girls’ venomous staff. Amply funded by a new termination agreement with the Hollywood studio hammered out by Meredith, Jaycee buys a house in Littleburgh reportedly built by the late architect Frank Lloyd Wright for his mistress. Once she settles in, it does not take long for her to discover that duplicity runs rampant below Wonderful Girls’ saccharine surface; bad-mouthing and sabotage lurk around every corner. Sipos writes with wit, introducing a large cast of quirky characters hiding a trove of backstories and deceptions. The dialogue is filled with sharply focused sarcasm, and Jaycee, who narrates the tale, is a feisty protagonist relentlessly trudging through a chaotic swamp of miscreants. Abel Dreaux, the village police chief, adds a bit of offbeat romance, and the aging Happy Lindstrom proves to be a delightful, surprising powerhouse. The relationship between Jaycee and Meredith provides some needed poignancy, as does the developing friendship between Jaycee and the gently rebellious Mennonite couple that tends to her culinary and gardening needs. Even so, acerbic humor is never more than a paragraph or two away.
A clever and entertaining read, with amusing, unexpected twists and a sturdy female protagonist.Pub Date: March 31, 2025
ISBN: 9798991999410
Page Count: 301
Publisher: Dartmouth Park
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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