5 spot

Easy on the Eyes

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:31:00 +0000

On the heels of her 2006 book release Flirting with Forty—which would become a Lifetime movie—Jane Porter shines in her latest novel Easy on the Eyes, which focuses on a woman fighting the ravages of time. Written with power and emotion, you will not only feel for but also fight with main character, TV entertainment show host Tiana Tomlinson, as she struggles to save her job, navigate her personal life, and all out survive in the fast-paced celebrity world were image is everything.

At thirty-eight, Tiana seems to have it all, but she’s just now coming out of the haze of her life. She is a woman who has always worked hard to get where she’s gotten, but it seems she’s gotten a little too comfortable in her position as host of America Tonight, one of the top entertainment news shows out there. She gets a reality check when her boss wants to make her one-woman show a two-woman gig, adding on fresh talent found in the bubbly twenty-eight-year-old Shelby.

While Tiana tries her hardest to find angles to save her job without doing exactly what her agent, boss, and other industry peers are pushing her to do (get "work" done on her aging face), fate seems to be playing a cruel game with her as she keeps being thrown together with Dr. Michael O’Sullivan (aka Dr. Hollywood), the devastatingly handsome plastic surgeon to the stars whom Tiana hates more for what he represents than who he really is.

I was very impressed by how Porter was able to delve into a world many of us hardly acknowledge and still keep true to her characters. While the scenes are written with powerful emotion and gripping realism, there is still a lightheartedness and romance as Michael and Tiana dance around just how much they may not actually hate each other. Easy on the Eyes is another Jane Porter highlight showing readers and, in this case, Hollywood just how tough women over the age of thirty can be.

Written by: Nina Lopez-Ortiz, October 9th 2009

Mating Ritual of the North American WASP

admin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:32:00 +0000

By Lauren Lipton

5 spot

spoiler alert At its core, Mating Rituals of the North American WASP is wholly typical. Girl goes to Vegas. Girl gets drunk. Girl wakes up to find she married some stranger. Girl flees back to New York. Boy calls her up to tell her that, yes, they’re legally married. In time, Boy and Girl fall in love and decide to stay married. Mix in a secondary cliché plot: if they stay married, they get money.

Peggy is a New Yorker who runs a shop with her best friend. They’ve been successful for ten years, but their rent is about to be hiked up (that much is realistic). Luke Sedgwick is the last surviving member of the venerable Sedgwick clan, a family that has not left Connecticut since its founder built a big house which is now falling apart. Luke would love to sell the house and leave his oppressive birthright behind him, but his great-aunt Abigail is in her eighties and she refuses to leave. Her health is deteriorating at the same pace as the house, and Luke is badly in need of a way to pay for both.

Peggy and Luke meet in Vegas where inhibitions go to die. Aunt Abigail, clearly having her priorities straight, says she will allow Luke to sell the house if he and Peggy remain married for one year. Needing her share of the house’s selling price, Peggy starts leading a double life. During the week she lives and works in the city and on weekends she rents a car, drives to Connecticut, and pretends to be the happily married wife of a genuine, full-blooded WASP.

I kept reading this book out of a sense of obligation, and because there was nothing terribly egregious about it. But in hindsight, I’m actually rather pissed. You see, there’s Peggy and Luke… and then there’s Peggy and Brock.

Brock is Peggy’s long-time boyfriend/pet frat boy-cum-thrillseeker. They’ve been dating for six years, and she desperately wants him to pop the question. He’s constantly finding reasons not to. They have a big fight right before Peggy goes to Vegas, and later, just as she’s having feelings for Luke, Brock shows up with a ring. Peggy tells herself she can wait out the six months left of secret marriage with no one the wiser.

Brock is a selfish, childish dolt. He has no redeeming qualities besides being handsome. He’s comfortable in a no-strings relationship with a woman who is too anxious to assert herself, and he likes it that way. Peggy’s waffling is annoying, and her self-delusion more than a little infuriating. Worse, she doesn’t have that big, cathartic "I Am An Idiot And I Really Love Luke" moment at the end. In a faceoff between the three of them, she chooses Brock. Sure, it comes right in the very end, but Silent Luke’s not exactly fantastic either.

The book itself is WASP-ish. There’s no sex, no intimacy, and no delicious description. I never really rooted for Luke because I never felt the supposed connection with Peggy. I didn’t have much sympathy for either of them because there wasn’t much to like about them.

I will give kudos for a heroine who wasn’t stereotypical. Peggy has a streak of neurosis that I liked, but it wasn’t made into a defining issue, and it could have been. I would have much preferred a story about a woman who learns to let go of her own anxiety through her exposure to some classically repressed people.

Written by: Richenda Gould, July 30th 2009

Love and Other Natural Disasters

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:04:00 +0000

By Holly Shumas

5 spot

This is your life, now what?

This is the question Eve has to answer when she finds out during Thanksgiving dinner that her husband, Jon, has been having a long distance emotional affair with another woman for the past year. Eve is devastated and demands that Jon move out that night. Jon complies and leaves their house. Eve’s feeling of betrayal and mistrust lead her to start hacking Jon’s email in order to find out more about the other woman, Laney. Eve reads all Jon’s correspondence with Laney, but she is unable to figure why Jon lied to her for a year. Eve questions Jon’s motives for the past year of their marriage. The affair causes Eve to reexamine her life as well. She truly wants to figure out what she wants out of life and from her marriage. Eve wonders about the “what-ifs” in her life (getting pregnant, marrying Jon) and what her life would be like if she had not married Jon.

Eve and Jon must also deal with the judgment of family and friends. Eve and John’s friends and family feel that if Jon did not have sex with Laney, then all should be fine with the marriage. After all, it was just an emotional affair. But Eve does not see it that way. Eve cannot understand why her husband would spend a year secretly communicating with another woman, confiding in her and sharing details of their marriage. Lil, Eve’s friend, sums it up when she says, “If he were having sex with the woman, you could chalk the whole thing up to novelty. It could be that he was so overcome by lust that he lost his mind for a while. You could even say he was so hot for her that he mistook it for love, and once they go thinking it’s love, well, everything’s fair game. But a year of emails phone calls—that’s about his mind and his heart, not just his dick. Call me crazy, but the dick’s preferable.”

Love and Other Natural Disasters is not typical chick lit. Holly Shumas’s perspective as a licensed family therapist allows her to get into the complications of fidelity and emotional intimacy in the novel. Eve learns more about herself during the time that she and Jon are part. Eventually, Eve and Jon learn to deal with their anger and to forgive each other. They both take responsibility for their actions and their relationship. Although Eve and Jon decide to take another chance on their marriage, their future is uncertain.

Although the actions of Eve and Jon were at times annoying and frustrating, I found Love and Other Natural Disasters to be an enjoyable book. I wanted to know what happened to the characters and how their problems were resolved.

Written by: Rekesha Spellman, July 11th 2009

The Makedown

admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:19:00 +0000

By Gitty Daneshvari

5 spot

The Makedown is marketed as a witty take on a makeover in reverse. However, this part of the storyline actually occurs in the last fourth of the novel. The first two parts focus on the makeover of the narrator and main character, Anna Norton, and the third focuses on the start of her dysfunctional relationship with her boyfriend, Ben.

The first section of the novel, titled “Hello Fatty,” describes Anna ages ten to twenty-three with nearly every “ugly” cliché imaginable. She is “fat,” has braces; acne; greasy, matted hair; and is a bad dresser. However, she is also extremely intelligent, landing a spot at the University of Pennsylvania and ultimately graduating with a degree in molecular biology.

After a short series of unfortunate events on her twenty-third birthday, Anna decides to move to New York City, giving up an apprenticeship at a research facility in Ohio. Disheartened by a job interview on Wall Street in which she is mocked for her appearance, the Penn graduate takes a job as a caterer’s assistant making minimum wage. But she doesn’t care because this caterer, Janice, is her “fairy godmother,” the person Anna has been waiting for to transform her “ugly” and “fat” self into something beautiful.

After calling all of the delivery places in Anna’s Brooklyn neighborhood and telling them not to serve her, Janice finally gets Anna to start eating healthy and exercising. She also introduces Anna to the Gap, her dermatologist, and mustache waxing. Anna is rewarded for all of this with her first New York boyfriend, Ben.

The only problem is Anna’s intense insecurity, left over from her days as a “fatty.” In comparison to Ben’s ex-girlfriends, she feels she just doesn’t stack up. She worries about Ben only asking her out because his mother suggested it. She worries about the girls who smile at Ben and worries even more when he smiles back. She overhears him give his email address to a coffee barista and pretends to faint for attention. She finally decides that he is just too good looking, and knows it too well, for their relationship to work.

Instead of breaking up and moving on, Anna can’t let him go. Thus, she plans The Makedown. In the words of Anna, “makedowns are applied to lessen the excessive beauty that Mother Nature accidentally dumped on certain people.” She focuses on fattening Ben up, thinning out his hair, and dressing him poorly. She convinces herself making Ben less beautiful will be the answer to her relationship problems, but, as expected, she’s wrong.

To be honest, I didn’t find this book very witty. The superficiality of the characters was painful, not humorous, for the most part, and while the concept might sound unique, the story was still quite predictable. I appreciate that the end goal of the novel is to remind the reader to be happy and confident in herself before committing to another person and that looks aren’t really everything, but I wish those points weren’t so muddy.

The book’s writing is in the vein of Helen Fielding or Marian Keyes, but the biggest difference is those authors’ characters are much more relatable, and more realistic, than Anna. I left the book feeling sorrier for her than I did when it started and, even if that was part of the author’s intention, it was disappointing.

Written by: Jill Hindenach, May 14th 2009

Your Roots Are Showing

admin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:53:00 +0000

By Elise Chidley

5 spot

I really tried to like this book because it has many good points. The plot centers on a painfully honest email that Lizzie, the main character, sends by mistake to her husband revealing the drudgery that her life as a house-bound mother and wife has become.

The couple separates and Lizzie is forced to face herself while taking care of the kids, of course. Since getting married, her weight, looks, and physical habits have gone down the drain. Let’s be clear here, Lizzie didn’t have much self-esteem before she met her prince...er, James. The romantic fuzziness prevails and James, who rarely got sex during the marriage, remains forever the patient love.

Yes, it is important for women (and men) to maintain their own identities while in relationships. Lizzie has lost sight of that, but in fairy tale success, regains it. That’s all nice and dandy, but a few things really irked me about this book. Lizzie goes on and on about how they had a healthy relationship and he was the greatest guy on earth (and not just because she was some mousey nobody and he was a rich athletic type) and she was so lucky and she didn’t know why!

What I got from her tall, handsome James was that he, born of an ultra-controlling ice queen mother, didn’t possess the assertive communication skills needed for maintaining a successful marriage. He completely shuts down when she sends the email—and he really didn’t seem to talk much during the marriage either. His decisions are based primarily on fear. Their lack of connection and their adolescent assumptions about each other are painful to read.

Despite her constant self-doubt, Lizzie’s friends are confident and successful women like Tessa. Never mind that Lizzie has suffered from chronic self-esteem since long before she met James and that it simply got worse with marriage. It isn’t until James leaves Lizzie that Tessa admits that she noticed Lizzie’s depression a few years ago, but didn’t say anything.

Oh, and Tessa, a certified pharmacist, advises her to use holistic healing and take vitamins and supplements. There is no need for a diagnosis or a physician’s input, and Lizzie certainly doesn’t need to know that supplements like St. John’s Wort can only be taken for short periods of time, or that there are side effects she’d have to watch for.

Incredulously, it only takes Lizzie a few months to tackle years of depression, get in top shape, run marathons, and fit back into a sexy, curvy dress. The message is inspiring, but the vehicle requires suspension of disbelief. The realistic bits, like alluding to the symptoms of depression (e.g, frumpy clothes, overeating, and anxiety) do not make up for the surreal ending and James’ spotless honor.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, March 1st 2009