"Wonderfully funny story with an HEA!"
Our story deals with three very different young women in
New York City. The first woman we're introduced to,
Penelope Mercury, is a reporter for the New York Telegraph.
Granted, she's a general assignment reporter but her boss
has told her that she's the forerunner for the court
reporting job she wants. So even though Penelope has a bad
cold, she leaves her crappy apartment in Soho to go wait on
a doorstep. After taking the subway and freezing her butt
off, she gets sent to another address. Once she arrives
there, her boss tells her to get to the office. When she
finally gets to her desk and out of all the layers of
clothing she has on, Penelope decides to have a smoke in
the darkroom—the room everyone sneaks to in order to smoke.
When her boss yells for her, she throws her butt in the
trash can—never realizing it wasn't totally out. As she
sits in her bosses office, she realizes his cousin is in
there with her and he ends up getting her dream job.
Totally angry and sick, Penelope vomits all over her boss,
at which point, she quits her job. Not only did Penelope
manage to lose her dream job to the bosses cousin, and
throw up all over her boss, she also managed to start a
fire in the darkroom. So now she has to pound the streets. Next we meet Lena "Lipstick" Lippencrass, young socialite
living in a fantastic apartment her parents bought and
spending at least fifty thousand dollars a month on
clothing. Well, there is a reason Lipstick spends so much
on clothing. After all, she is the social events editor for
Y magazine and has to attend them all and she can't be
photographed in the same dress for more than one occasion.
At least according to her boss. When she's out shopping for
some gowns for upcoming events, Lipstick's credit cards are
declined—all of them. Figuring it's just a mix-up and her
mother's cards were misplaced again, Lipstick goes home,
only to find her parents there waiting for her. After
Lipstick once again refuses to work for her father, he cuts
her off completely—credit cards, apartment, everything.
Through a mutual friend, Lipstick ends up getting an
apartment in Penelope's building. The third woman in our group is Dana Gluck, a very
successful corporate litigator. In fact, Dana is already a
junior partner in the firm she works for. Unfortunately for
Dana, she can't get over her divorce. After all, no one in
her family has divorced and the worst part—the woman her
husband is involved with gets pregnant. Dana did manage to
get a very nice settlement out of the divorce though. Not
only did she get to keep her Dachsie Karl, but she also
managed to have her husband pay for the whole top floor
apartment in her building for ten years. Not only does Dana
have an inferiority complex about not getting pregnant, her
husband also left her obsessing about her weight. Now Dana
is a recluse and rarely leaves her apartment except to go
to work and a weekly Weight Watchers meeting. MERCURY IN RETROGRADE is a quick, entertaining read. Paula
Froelich had me laughing out loud at some of the different
things these women went through, from Penelope's conducting
an interview on air while in underwear for National
Underwear week, to Lipstick's move to Soho. We get to ride
along as these three women begin to spend time together and
grow. While they may not get the jobs they wanted, they do
get the positions which are best for them. And best of all,
they all three get a romantic involvement. Though chick lit
is not my favorite genre to read, I really loved this
story. If you're in the mood for a good laugh and an HEA,
don't miss this story! I highly recommend it.
Reviewed by Chere Gruver
Posted February 17, 2010
|
|
When Mercury is in retrograde, the only guarantee is anything that can go wrong, will. Penelope Mercury, an intrepid reporter at the New York Telegraph, has pounded the pavement for five years from city borough to borough, carrying out her boss's eccentric orders to break stories that seem inconsequential to everyone but him. Finally, she is inches away from being promoted to her dream job — covering courtroom drama for the paper — but after one spectacularly disastrous day, she is fired instead. Lena "Lipstick Carcrash" Lipp encrass has a pretty fabulous life, even by a socialite's standards, as a top editor at the high fashion magazine Y. Long lunches with her girlfriends and afternoons spent shopping at Bergdorf's are all in a day's work. But when Lena's always indulgent parents abruptly cut off her cash flow and kick her out of her beloved West Village duplex for refusing to work for the family business, she is forced to confront the reality of what it takes to pay the bills. Dana Gluck, a workaholic lawyer, had been married for two years to a man who was perfect on paper but increasingly critical in reality. She hoped that her dreams of motherhood would be fulfilled soon, which surely would also fix their marriage problems. Instead, her husband leaves her for an exchange student/model who, to make matters worse, promptly gets pregnant. When fate conspires to have these three very different women move into the same SoHo apartment building, they soon discover that having their carefully planned lives fall to pieces might be the best thing that could have ever happened to them.
|
