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Book Review: A Slight Change of Plan by Dee Ernst
Chick Lit Review

Book Review: A Slight Change of Plan by Dee Ernst

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Summary:
Kate Everett is about to begin her “second act.” She’s been a widow for eight years and thinks it might be time to start looking for someone to share her life with again. She quits her high-pressure job for something that will allow her more leisure time. She gets rid of the huge family home and moves into a fabulous condo that’s smaller and easier to manage. She’s pretty much got the rest of her life figured out. All she has to do is sit back, relax, and let the pieces fall into place.
But her real life never gets the memo. First, her son moves back in with her—along with his girlfriend. Her dream job falls through, leaving her unemployed. Her mother, whom she hadn’t spoken to in years, can no longer live alone and has to move into her basement. And her only daughter is planning the smallest and simplest wedding in the history of all weddings, much to Kate’s dismay.
Kate thinks that she and Jake, her former college love who has reemerged on an online dating site, of all places, can build something real, and that maybe her happy ending is in front of her at last. But the arrival of Edward, her daughter’s future father-in-law, presents Kate with an unexpected choice.
It looks like real happiness may require a slight change of plan.
Review:
I know people say that if you don’t think you can relate to a main character, you might want to a pass on a book. This I don’t agree with. Some of my favorite books have featured mothers and women either much older or younger than me, and I’ve had a fine time reading their stories. A Slight Change of Plan falls into that category. Kate is fifty-five and a widow, with three grown children. I’m twenty-six, recently married, zero kids (unless you count my new puppy). But her story captivated me from the beginning and I eagerly read this book quite quickly. There are plenty of interesting sub-plots – from Kate dealing with her mother, her daughter getting married, her son having a baby – that each chapter felt action-packed, even when the main storyline wasn’t being discussed. A very well-written story, and I would recommend!
4.5 stars

November 26, 2013
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Author Profile: Dee Ernst
Chick Lit Authors

Author Profile: Dee Ernst

Author Name: Dee Ernst
Website: http://dernst2010.wordpress.com/
Bio: Dee Ernst was born Elizabeth Diane Ascoli in Newark, NJ. Her family moved to Morristown, NJ when she was still a toddler. She started writing stories on a battered Royal typewriter when she was about ten or twelve, and she graduated Morristown High School determined to pursue a career as a writer in some form or another (she considered advertising, but luckily came to her senses). Creative writing majors were hard to find in 1974, so she attended Marshall University as a journalism major. That wasn’t working, so she tried Education, but that didn’t quite work either. Several jobs and years later, staying home with a three-year-old and trying to figure out what to do when she grew up, Joan Hamburg on WOR radio in New York was interviewing someone who said if you wanted to know what to with your life, remember what you were playing when you were ten, and try to turn that into a career. Since Dee was writing stories at ten, she sat down and wrote her first novel. It went nowhere. Her second novel got her a terrific agent and upwards of fifteen rejection letters (She reread them all in preparation of this biography). Her third novel, Better Off Without Him, garnered even more rejection letters from a much higher caliber of editor. Undaunted, she self-published Better Off Without Him in October 2010. She is now waiting patiently for fame and fortune.
Titles: Better Off Without Him
See my review for Better Off Without Him!
Bio retrieved from dernst.com

August 2, 2012
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Better Off Without Him by Dee Ernst
Chick Lit Review

Better Off Without Him by Dee Ernst

Mona Berman, a best-selling romance author, knows how to write a fabulous happily-ever-after story. But her own world gets an unwelcome rewrite when her husband of twenty years leaves her for a much younger, thinner and French….girl. Her three teenagers daughters convince Mona she needs to give dating another shot, and spending the summer down at the Jersey Shore seems to be the perfect place for her to get back in the swing of things. But can Mona concentrate on her dates (the majority being blazing failures) when she can only think of Ben – the sexy plumber back at home that inspires her steamiest love scenes? Mona gets the idea for a new novel that features the heroine finding true happiness after being dumped. But will her writing reflect her own life?
I thought Better Off Without Him by Dee Ernst was a perfectly pleasant novel. I really connected with Mona regardless of our age difference, and I loved the romance between her and Ben. I thought some of the dates she went on while at the Shore were hilarious, and the cast of supporting characters really helped this book give it that extra oomph. I love books that feature atypical characters, and I definitely think that is where Better Off Without Him falls. A very enjoyable read that I would recommend to chick lit fans.
[Rating: 4]

May 25, 2012
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In My Mailbox: Week of October 2
Chick Lit Plus

In My Mailbox: Week of October 2

In My Mailbox: Week of October 2

Title: What’s Your Number?
Author: Karyn Bosnak
Received: From Transworld Publishers
Synopsis: Bosnak, the woman behind the popular “Save Karyn” Web site (she also penned a book by the same title), makes her fiction debut with the tepid tale of Delilah Darling, a woman on the cusp of 30 who loses her job and sleeps with her heinous former boss in an entanglement that’s the 20th notch on her headboard. It’s a painful realization, as she’d just read in the New York Post, that the average person has 10.5 partners in their lifetime. Fearing she has more than reached her quota, Delilah takes off on a cross-country trip, determined to find “the one” among the 20 of her former lovers. But she soon discovers that the men of her romantic past “an inmate, a rehab patient, a dog-obsessed Amway salesman and a Muppeteer among them” aren’t exactly life-partner material. Clever chapter breaks that feature maps and voice-mail transcripts are fun additions, but the story” hobbled by limp humor, razor-thin characters and phoned-in prose” takes too long to find its inevitably happy ending.

Title: The Arrivals
Author: Meg Mitchell Moore
Received: From SheKnows Book Club
Synopsis: An empty nest fills back up with alarming speed in Moore’s promising debut. Five years have passed since the last of their kids have left home, and Ginny and William Owens have settled into a comfortable rhythm at home in Burlington, Vt., that’s unexpectedly disrupted. Their exhausted and defeated daughter, Lillian, shows up with three-year-old Olivia, three-month-old Philip, and without her husband. Within days, Lillian’s brother, Stephen, and his pregnant wife, Jane, arrive for an unannounced visit that will turn into a summer-long stay. Daughter Rachel, still working in New York, is teetering on the edge of financial and emotional disaster, and will also end up in Burlington in short order. Moore finds a crisp narrative in the morass of an overpacked household, and she keeps the proceedings moving with an assurance and outlook reminiscent of Laurie Colwin, evoking emotional universals with the simplest of observations, as in “the peace you feel when you are awake in a house where children are sleeping.”

Title: Don’t Let Me Go
Author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
Received: From Transworld Publishers
Synopsis: Sometimes a child knows better…

GRACE
Ten-year-old Grace knows that her mum loves her, but her mum loves drugs too. And there’s only so long Grace can fend off the ‘woman from the county’ who is threatening to put her into care. Her only hope is…

BILLY
Grown-man Billy Shine hasn’t been out of his apartment for years. People scare him, and the outside world scares him even more. Day in, day out, he lives a perfectly orchestrated silent life within his four walls. Until now. . .

THE PLAN
Grace bursts into Billy’s life with a loud voice and a brave plan to get her mum clean. And it won’t be easy, because they will have to confiscate the one thing her mum holds most dear . . . they will have to kidnap Grace.

Title: Better Off Without Him
Author: Dee Ernst
Received: From Dee Ernst
Synopsis: Mona Berman is an expert at Happily Ever After – after all, she’s a best-selling Romance writer and happy endings are what she does best. So when her husband of twenty years leaves her for somebody 15 years younger, 20 pounds lighter, and French, she’s got a lot of adjusting to do, both personally and professionally. Lucky for her she’s got three savvy teen daughters, a few good friends, and Ben, the world’s sexiest plumber, to help her along the way.

First she decides that her next book will be the anti-romance – her heroine finds the best part of her life AFTER getting dumped. Next her daughters tell her she needs to start practice dating, and summer at the Jersey shore is the perfect place for that. She’s also juggling her soon-to-be-ex, a loony aunt, and a match-making neighbor, while Ben is sending her romance-driven imagination into overdrive. Can Mona’s life imitate art? Can she write her own happy ending?

October 2, 2011
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