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This book is . . . bad. It is just bad. I have spent far too long staring at the empty review window, trying to think of an eloquent way to explain its badness, but really it's as simple as: every element is bad.
Let me back up a moment. (Like an uninspired episode of TV following its dramatic tease with "24 Hours Earlier. . .") I really enjoy the TV show Younger, based on Redmond's previous book of the same name. I read Younger the book and found it not great, but still imbued with enough of the TV show's charm for me not to hate it, and for me to be grateful for what it spawned.
This sequel claims to have an amusing premise: that protagonist Liza had also written a book about her experiences pretending to be younger to get a job in publishing after her divorce, and that book is now being made into a TV show by her BFF Kelsey -- a TV show with a lot of amusing meta-connections to our world's Younger show. Then, when she goes to L.A. to work on the pilot, Liza finds herself falling for the actor who's playing her character's boss on the TV show, which is a reference to the real world TV show, time is a flat circle, etc. That sounds fun! Silly! Bring it on!
Except what this book is actually about is how every character is actually a deeply horrible person. I think Redmond wanted it to secretly be about how motherhood is hard and the choices women have to make vis-a-vis having children and maintaining their careers are incredibly difficult -- important topics. But exploring this takes up much more time than the fluffy rom-com the description promises. Worse, it requires, at various points: Liza to be a selfish, awful friend; Kelsey to be a selfish, awful, friend; and Liza's other best friend Maggie to -- you guessed it -- be a selfish, awful friend. These characters spend more time fighting than in any way seeming to like each other. Do you know what's one of the things I like best about the show? The women's friendships.
Worse, though -- Liza has apparently raised a complete monster in her daughter Caitlin, who fully expects her mother to be her new baby's unpaid, live-in caretaker. Liza repeatedly tells Caitlin she doesn't want to do this and patiently explains that Caitlin and her husband -- yes, she's married -- have other options, even if they both want to keep their jobs. Oh, but daycare or a nanny are out of the question, Caitlin says -- she could never trust her child with a stranger!
W
H
A
T
When Liza goes to L.A. for work, she's presented as the bad guy for "abandoning" her daughter in the later months of her pregnancy, despite her daughter being, you know, an adult, with a husband and a support system. After the baby is born, Liza is coerced into being the unpaid help (and at one point thrown shade by Caitlin when Caitlin comes home from work and Liza hasn't also made dinner). Eventually, after giving me a coronary, this plotline peters out so Liza can have her textually unsupported and unsexy affair with a movie star, which ends in a marriage proposal after two seconds. Caitlin decides to have a second baby right away, to like . . . get it over with. And Josh, the only character in the book (and in the show's later seasons) who is consistently likable, is written off as unable to have a happy ending -- but it's cool for Kelsey to use him for his sperm though, lol.
W
H
Y
I hated this book. The writing is bad: at one point early on, Liza is so surprised, that, she says, "My stomach dropped into my vagina." So I guess some of this is on me. But just--yikes. I don't know what else I can say. I'm getting too old for this shit.
Let me back up a moment. (Like an uninspired episode of TV following its dramatic tease with "24 Hours Earlier. . .") I really enjoy the TV show Younger, based on Redmond's previous book of the same name. I read Younger the book and found it not great, but still imbued with enough of the TV show's charm for me not to hate it, and for me to be grateful for what it spawned.
This sequel claims to have an amusing premise: that protagonist Liza had also written a book about her experiences pretending to be younger to get a job in publishing after her divorce, and that book is now being made into a TV show by her BFF Kelsey -- a TV show with a lot of amusing meta-connections to our world's Younger show. Then, when she goes to L.A. to work on the pilot, Liza finds herself falling for the actor who's playing her character's boss on the TV show, which is a reference to the real world TV show, time is a flat circle, etc. That sounds fun! Silly! Bring it on!
Except what this book is actually about is how every character is actually a deeply horrible person. I think Redmond wanted it to secretly be about how motherhood is hard and the choices women have to make vis-a-vis having children and maintaining their careers are incredibly difficult -- important topics. But exploring this takes up much more time than the fluffy rom-com the description promises. Worse, it requires, at various points: Liza to be a selfish, awful friend; Kelsey to be a selfish, awful, friend; and Liza's other best friend Maggie to -- you guessed it -- be a selfish, awful friend. These characters spend more time fighting than in any way seeming to like each other. Do you know what's one of the things I like best about the show? The women's friendships.
Worse, though -- Liza has apparently raised a complete monster in her daughter Caitlin, who fully expects her mother to be her new baby's unpaid, live-in caretaker. Liza repeatedly tells Caitlin she doesn't want to do this and patiently explains that Caitlin and her husband -- yes, she's married -- have other options, even if they both want to keep their jobs. Oh, but daycare or a nanny are out of the question, Caitlin says -- she could never trust her child with a stranger!
W
H
A
T
When Liza goes to L.A. for work, she's presented as the bad guy for "abandoning" her daughter in the later months of her pregnancy, despite her daughter being, you know, an adult, with a husband and a support system. After the baby is born, Liza is coerced into being the unpaid help (and at one point thrown shade by Caitlin when Caitlin comes home from work and Liza hasn't also made dinner). Eventually, after giving me a coronary, this plotline peters out so Liza can have her textually unsupported and unsexy affair with a movie star, which ends in a marriage proposal after two seconds. Caitlin decides to have a second baby right away, to like . . . get it over with. And Josh, the only character in the book (and in the show's later seasons) who is consistently likable, is written off as unable to have a happy ending -- but it's cool for Kelsey to use him for his sperm though, lol.
W
H
Y
I hated this book. The writing is bad: at one point early on, Liza is so surprised, that, she says, "My stomach dropped into my vagina." So I guess some of this is on me. But just--yikes. I don't know what else I can say. I'm getting too old for this shit.