Review by Booklist Review
Prentiss (Tuesday Nights in 1980, 2016) beautifully interweaves the complexities of being a daughter, becoming an adult, friendships between women, self expression, and motherhood in this introspective, energetic novel. The past, present, and future blend together, prompting Emily to ask difficult questions as she navigates her life. How does losing one's mother during childbirth affect the way one interacts with adult women? Can the bonds between women survive in a man's world? Is financial freedom worth conforming to a corporate job instead of dedicating one's life to being creative? What are the rules when you fight for but lose someone you love? How can one be a good mother without losing oneself? Prentiss' writing is lively and dynamic, allowing even secondary characters, however small their roles, to make a lasting impact. As she tracks the ever-evolving feelings involved in womanhood during different phases in life, the intimate distress, yearning, grief, and laughter she evokes makes the novel seem like her protagonist's memoir, resulting in a tale that grants readers a sense of connection, hope, and comfort.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Prentiss (Tuesday Nights in 1980) chronicles the life and loves of a New York City copywriter in her appealing latest. Emily, a 20-something New Yorker, seems to have it all: a cute photographer boyfriend named Wes, a writing job for a prominent retailer, and a stalwart work bestie named Megan. However, Emily is getting tired of writing cutesy catalog copy and dreams of becoming a writer like her biological mother who had given her up for adoption. Megan, meanwhile, ends an affair with their boss and gets fired, leaving Emily to flounder. When Emily is invited to a wedding in Italy and Wes can't make it, she takes Megan. There, Emily learns she's unexpectedly pregnant, and when Megan finds an unflattering description of herself in Emily's diary, they have a friendship-ending fight. Soon, Emily's not sure whom she can count on or what to do about her pregnancy. Prentiss has a gift for crafting complex characters, and her insight on the mixed emotions around adoption and unexpected pregnancy ring true throughout. With plenty of charm and drama, Prentiss keeps readers turning the pages. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An adopted woman wrestles with the binaries of art versus motherhood, chosen family versus found family, and social expectation versus authenticity. On the ninth floor of a department store building on 34th street in Manhattan, Emily writes. It's not the kind of writing she wishes she could make a living at--novels, stories, literary stuff. Rather, it's taglines and ad copy to ensure a woman feels lacking enough in glamour to offer up a "share of her wallet" (as the CEO puts it) to buy a cashmere sweater or Chanel blouse. Emily has a photographer boyfriend, Wes, and a work BFF, Megan, whose artistic impulses are also subverted by toiling at the store. Emily's life is OK, but cracks quickly begin to show: Megan has an affair with the boss and is fired; Wes grows distant. When Emily is invited to a wedding in Italy, giving her the opportunity to revisit an area where she'd lived as a student with an alluring art historian and her young daughters, she jumps at the chance to leave her troubles behind, taking Megan along with her. When a series of life-altering events happen in Italy, Emily must confront her motherless and often rudderless past, her uncertain present, and a future in which she is pulled in a million directions so familiar to women: worker, partner, mother, friend, and maker. Prentiss' prose is energetic and inventive, and Emily's restless imagination can make for fun interludes, as when she imagines Megan as an angel in a painting giving her advice. However, for much of the book, Prentiss tries to present Emily as a person still figuring out who she is and who she wants to become, and the result is that Emily sometimes feels more a symbolic repository of the contemporary New York woman than a fully formed character. A blurry protagonist deals with some sharply realistic life demands. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
