Almost forty years old, Isolde Brilliant is married with a small child and has just been made redundant from her job as a hedge fund manager. She keeps her nanny on, argues with her husband who runs a publishing company from home that never makes a profit, breastfeeds for the minimal amount of time, and generally whinges about her life and becomes obsessed with throwing money at her nanny's fertility issues. Then she becomes pregnant yet again. And once the second poor baby is born she complains about her private room before having the baby brutally circumcised! Hard to find anything endearing about the main character who really needs to get a dose of the reality for mothers who are not super rich and can't afford a nanny while they swan around all day doing nothing much really. The try at humour is unsuccessful, the characters selfish and not people you would want to know, nothing to recommend actually. ( )

The author has clearly advanced from single gal to family woman, but the writing is just as outrageous as it was before. I love that she writes exactly what her main character is thinking, regardless of what it is. Most authors hold back to a certain extent, but she puts it right out there. From the grim reaper coming to have sex with her to fantasies of late-term abortions, this woman is more real than most of your friends! As a single woman myself, I got insight into what life might be like if I did get married and wanted kids. It's good to know where people are coming from. ( )

I expected to enjoy this book. I liked the premise, and the title was appealing. I've been married twice (once with three children, the second without), and I thought I'd be able to relate. But I was really turned off by the amount of money these people casually threw around, and could neither identify nor sympathize with the protagonist. She needed antidepressants and a good dose of eat, pray, love. I thought the ending was an enormous cop-out, too; instead of going for a literary ending, which would have been intriguing, Belle took the chick-list easy way out. It reminded me of Margaret Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_ in that way: It would have been a much stronger book if the ending hadn't been so pat. Still, it was an engaging and entertaining read while it lasted. I wouldn't recommend this as a must-read or a best seller, but if you're just looking for something to pass the time till the next really good book comes along, this would fill a few hours. ( )

Say you have friends who seem, to you, to have an awful marriage and are terrible parents, but since it's none of your business, you can't really say anything about their staying together and having more kids. Well, that's a bit what reading this novel is like.

Actually, this book had two feels, really. On one hand, this felt a bit chick lit-y, as if Bridget Jones finally got married and had to face turning 40; on the other hand, this had the kind of quirky tone I associate with Aimee Bender or Lauren Groff. There's not much plot other than the drama heroine Isolde creates, but author Jennifer Belle paints an evocative (and slightly exaggerated) picture of Manhattan-based motherhood and marriage.

My waffling about this book derives from my feelings on Isolde. On one hand, Isolde is deeply empathetic and curious about the world and those in her life (unlike many of her Manhattanite acquaintances); and yet, she's so clueless and so insensitive, it's almost criminal. Maybe I disliked her so strongly because she was ultimately wholly unapologetic about her behavior. I'd think, 'have you no shame?', but perhaps that's not actually a flaw. Her unapologetic, hopeless, best intentioned but irrevocably inappropriate behavior brings her heartache but also allows her to take her life as it is and embrace what is good (a skill I have yet to perfect!).

In the end, I think I felt for Isolde as I might for a casual acquaintance: bemusement in small doses. When I read this book in long stretches, I started to get a big seasick from the repeating up-down bounce of Isolde's emotional roller coaster. There's a sort of vignette-y feel to this novel -- large chunks of time pass without comment -- and so the chapters and characters seemed a bit disconnected to me. The vignette-y feel is further compounded by the dropped plot moments: after a horrifyingly inappropriate obsession with her nanny's fertility challenges, both Belle and Isolde forget about the nanny once she's pregnant; nor are the shocking, credulity-straining, and damaging things her husband does during his son's birthday parties ever addressed or revisited.

I definitely over thought when it came to this novel, for good and for bad, but it certainly inspired conversations with friends on marriage (especially hetero marriage), parenthood, self-identity, and urban living. I'm probably not the target audience but I found this novel unexpectedly entertaining (if not maddening) and that's not a bad thing! ( )

I almost gave up on this book several times before getting to the halfway point, but it picked up for me after that.I think I was (once again) having trouble with the wealthy New York setting. It's so foreign to me, but it doesn't look like it should be. The rules of life aren't what I'm expecting, and it throws me.The characters are more outspoken, with much harsher language than I'd expect. And yes, the protagonist is a bit of a bitch. And a snob. And even given than I don't really understand the world it's set in, the situations didn't ring true to me.I'm reading through, trying to figure out whether the author means for there to be this much distance between the reader and the book? Am I just out of it, not edgy enough for this one? Or is it failing to deliver.I decided to give it one more chance, then pick up something else if it still wasn't working for me.And finally, it started to come together. Not a lot, but I became interested in what was happening, even if I still didn't relate. Even if I still wasn't sure I was on the same planet as the New York this book is set in. ( )