Author: Meredith Cagen
Publisher: iUniverse (November 23, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1440169748:  ISBN-13: 978-1440169748

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Hooray for humor!  Lately I’ve been plagued with stories of pain, anger, brutality, and broken hearts.  Thankfully, Ms. Cagen has sent me a book that’s uplifting, smart, sassy, and extremely funny, spotlighting all the pretentious fun that’s had on the Upper East side of Manhattan.

Lindsay Chandler is a 32-year-old wife and mother.  She’s one of those strange entities in the high-brow world of Manhattan wives – she has an actual day job, cleans her own house, cooks her own meals, and raises her children without a nanny.  Lindsay is married to Grant, a high-profile divorce attorney who treats his doting, wonderful wife like a subservient slave, ignores his children completely, hides in his bedroom every night playing games on the computer, forgets his wife’s birthday, and, basically, is a waste of a human being.

Lindsay is slowly getting sick and tired of her unloving, uncaring husband.  She goes to the gym every morning to hit the treadmill to try and tame her curvaceous body, because she’s surrounded by deathly-skinny blonde chicks who are second and third wives.  The trophy wives think Lindsay being a career girl is “cute.”  This breed of women believes emergencies are when the cook is sick and they have to order in dinner.  (One of the funniest moments was when Lindsay goes to the kids’ swanky school and runs into a woman who calls herself Paris.  Well, this woman was once Patti-Ann from Arkansas – there are a great deal of skinny blondes biding their time to get their claws into the next rich man, and Patti-Ann is one who achieved her plan.) 

Lindsay is a multi-tasker to the extreme.  She hundreds of jobs and chores during the day, and does them better than any ten workers ever could.  Jodee is her best friend at work.  Jodee is a great girl who’s mean to all blind-dates if they’re too pretty, and has a secret crush on her longtime friend, Evan.  She weighs about 92-pounds sopping wet, but at one point looks into lipo in order to get her man.  Tanya is also a friend of Lindsay’s.  Tanya is a stewardess who’s always on the lookout for her next ex-husband.  Now, both Tanya and Jodee want to help Lindsay get away from her overbearing husband – or, at least, help her to be happier because she’s such a good friend to them.

Struggling with her life and her unfeeling marriage, Lindsay steps into the elevator of her building one day and comes face to face with a man who gives her goose bumps.  This is a man who appreciates her wisdom.  He asks her questions, compliments her, and is actually interested in the advice she gives to propel his projects.  Lindsay is in seventh heaven, and falling for him fast.  Even seeing him escorting a new skinny blond every day of the week, and finding out that he used her son in order to open doors in his career, doesn’t matter to Lindsay.  She’s in love because he’s nice to her; he doesn’t seem to see the overweight and awkward woman that she sees every time she looks in the mirror.

Ladies, you’ll love this book.  You’ll get angry at Lindsay for being a welcome mat; you will both deplore and applaud her choices; and you’ll scream at the pages and roll your eyes when Lindsay keeps walking headfirst into trouble – but you’ll find yourself routing for her the whole way through.

The jokes are wonderful and the story is light, with a well-thought out plot that reminds me of how much I miss the sights and sounds of New York City – the most fantastic city in the world.

 Click Here To Purchase Size Eight in a Size Zero World