We start out with Joanie, a divorced mother recently re-entering the workforce during the current recession who is about to turn 50 years old and has sworn off of sex. Living with Joanie is her mother Ivy, who lost her entire life's fortune in the economic downturn and was forced to move into her daughter's home and who, coincidentally insists on calling Joanie "Roxanne." Finally, there's Joanie's teenage daughter, Caroline who is a mostly friendless loaner who likes one guy who is in one of her classes.
The story begins with the three of these women living together in a somewhat dysfunctional family. Joanie hates her job, has sworn off of sex since her divorce, is bothered by both her daughter and mother, and just to make things better....her ex-husband just got his younger girlfriend pregnant and they're getting married.
I thought this book would fly by, but it didn't. Midway through I found myself having problems character's names and their relationships to each other straight, possibly because people tend to call or think of each other by their first name. This is was awkward and sometimes difficult to follow. Even early on (page 7) Pennebaker makes somewhat of a deal about it:
"Your father called me with some news" Joanie said to Caroline . . .
"Why d'you call him my father?" Caroline asked. . . .
"What else would I call him?"
"Richard. Isn't that his name?"
Um....What?!?! I spent the rest of that chapter (and a few others) trying to figure out if somehow Richard (Joanie's Ex-husband/Caroline's father) somehow wasn't her biological father. (Nonspoiler: he is her biological father.) Just because a couple is divorced doesn't somehow make the father her father. If Joanie had called Richard her "husband" I could understand Caroline's reaction, but that's not the case at all. Maybe having the characters (apart from Ivy and Joanie to each other) mostly calling each other by their first names was supposed to symbolize that they're less of a family and more like strangers living under the same roof, but it quickly annoyed me as I was trying to keep the relationships together.
The terms that comes to mind the most when thinking about this novel's plot are predictable and pretty close to formulaic with rather static, one or two dimensional characters. We learn that Joanie (the mother and center of the story), is a divorced women who has sworn off of sex. She, of course, discovers her ex-husband has gotten his younger girlfriend, B.J., is pregnant on accident. Add to that that Joanie works with a bunch of young kids (ie: recent college graduates) and one man who is closer to her age who she feels she can talk to. (Warning! Spoiler Alert Ahead!!!) Did you guess that Joanie develops a crush on the older coworker and they have sex? It's not really forshadowing when it's mentioned that she's not had sex in a long time repeatedly and conveniently there's only really one other man in the book who she's not divorced to or related to.
The characters seem rather flat. For example, let's take Joanie, who we learn early on is a divorced single-mother who hates her job, has a small support group of divorced women, has sworn off of sex, is about to turn 50, and whose ex-husband is about to get remarried. Plus, she may have a crush on the only older man (ie: probably over 25) in her office. She's easily the main focus of the story, but that is about her entire character in a nutshell. There is some change (maybe, kinda), but it's abrupt and I was left wondering why and how she got there.
As for the other Caroline, the teenager,, can be summed up as a as a teenage girl who inexplicably is unpopular, but we don't really know why. She interacts with a boy in one of her classes and predictably falls hard for him. Ivy, the grandmother, is retired and lost her life's savings in the economic meltdown and lives with her daughter and researches things online. There maybe a few surprises about her, but, like the other characters, the growth in her character feels to happen inorganically at the end of the novel.
I should also add that the book is mentioned on the front cover as "breezily hilarious," but I didn't find much of it funny. I guess the fact that the grandmother character couldn't remember that Google wasn't pronounced "goggle," but having known older people who have problems with using the internet, that just wasn't that funny.
Overall, it's an ok read. Not tremendous, not wonderful, just ok.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
NOTICE: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I'd like to thank PR by the Book for sending me a copy in exchange for my honest review.
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