“Okay, so I totally suck at doing book reviews. Book reports in school? Just as sucky. Oh, I know, I know. I can talk about my books forever. Thing is, I'm terrible at giving pertinent detail and useful information. I tend to forget the finer points of a book/movie/whatever when telling about them. Not good for someone who one day hopes to make a living being a storyteller. But after reading this particular book, I thought, hey. It's worth a shot, right? So here goes. My first book review. If it doesn't make sense just pretend it did, okay? Please?
Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
Thank God for Amazon's handy dandy little recommendation feature. If not for that, I may never have discovered the wonderfulness that is Jennifer Weiner. I first discovered her sometime about three years ago while searching for a particular RDI book and Good In Bed popped up as a recommendation. After reading the blurb and several people's reviews and heck, let's be honest, the title is totally intriguing, I ordered myself a copy and never looked back. Since then I've become a die hard Jennifer Weiner fan. I've read all four of her novels and I marvel at them. You see, to me, she is what a good writer is all about. Out of the four novels each of them are markedly different. All wonderful, entertaining and hip, but all four unique.
A lot of writers, I've discovered tend to cover the same ground over and over again. Oh sure. The characters change. The locations sometimes changes and heck, sometimes even the main plot points change. But, much as I love Nicholas Sparks and John Grisham and many others, if you've read one of their books, you've read them all. They all have the same themes. The same feel. Just, I don't know, a level of sameness if that's a word.
Not so with Jennifer Weiner. Yeah, each book could be classified as chick-lit and they all have a sort of hip feel to them but they are so much more than that.
Goodnight Nobody is perhaps the most different of all. For one thing it takes place in Connecticut, for the most part, instead of Philadelphia. For another, it's a murder mystery. I like to think of it as "Desperate Housewives meets Bridget Jones."
The main character, Kate Klein, is a funky, fun, former New Yorker who is currently stuck in suburbia housewife hell. After a particularly harrowing experience on the streets of New York in which she is strollerjacked, her husband bundles her and their three children off to Upchurch (or Upchuck as Kate and her friend Janie call it) Connecticut. For Kate, life in Upchurch is like trying to force a square peg in a round hole. She doesn't fit. She is, as far as I'm concerned, the only normal person in Upchurch. She's a regular every day woman, mother and wife, stuck in a community that she describes as making Stepford look revolutionary. She served Cheetos and punch and played pin the tail on the donkey at her twins' birthday party. Her neighbors served healthy organic fair and had inflatable castles at their son's party. When she gives a dinner party for her husband's company, her mom ends up accidentally taking Ecstasy. Her neighbors avoid her for a week after.
But one Friday morning, things in Upchurch get shaken to the core and all hell breaks loose. Kitty Cavanaugh bites it. Or rather, she gets it stuck to her. A knife, being "it". Kate finds her playground acquaintance dead on the kitchen floor, the knife still protruding from her back. While everyone else scuttles around in shock and gossip, what does a square peg in a round hole do? She, with the help of her best friend Janie and her former crush Evan, investigates.
This book leads us on a merry chase of secrets, lies and infidelity and proves that things in Upchurch, as in real life, aren't always as they seem. I loved all the twists and turns. I even liked that not all of my questions were answered. I think what I loved the most though, is that there weren't any copouts in this book. Ms. Weiner took the hard way and stuck to it. She didn't magically fix anything the way many authors do. And as far as mysteries go, this one was a humdinger! The answer hit me just the way it did Kate...like a freight train!
This is a book to be savored...Read at leisure and utterly enjoyed. Don't be put off by the label "chick-lit" either. Sure, it has a lot of the chick-lit elements, that hip, fast paced feel, but it's so much more than that. It's a mystery, a mom-lit, a romance, a comedy and so much more. It's not a quick read on a Sunday afternoon but that's what so great about it. The characters and story you'll find within it's pages will stay with you long after the last page is read.
My rating? 5 stars all the way bay-beeee!
”
Janabelle wrote this review Thursday, September 6 2007.
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