This story from the creator of Gossip Girl centres around four families who live in the upscale Brooklyn neighbourhood of Cobble Hill.
Former model Mandy is married to ex-indie rocker Stuart and is faking having MS because all she wants to do is stay in bed all day.
Meanwhile her husband is spending time with school nurse Peaches, who used to have a big crush on him.
Roy and Wendy have recently arrived from England but the new environment is not helping him write his next novel, nor his wife settle in at her new magazine. And finally there’s inventor Tupper who never quite knows what his unconventional artist wife Elizabeth is up to on any given day.
This is a very character driven novel which offers an entertaining insight into one quirky set of NY creatives. However, it was lacking intrigue in the plot department.
Meet Shipley, Eliza, Tom and Nick, four college students starting their
freshman year at Dexter college. All four are completely different but
bound together by one drug-fuelled night at freshman orientation.
Shipley
is one of those good girls who never does anything wrong and wants to
break free during college; Eliza is a rebel who is jealous that her
beautiful roommate Shipley is attracting all of the male attention; Tom is
your average jock complete with the I'm-better-than-you persona and Nick
is a bona fide hippie who wants to build a yurt on the campus and smokes
way too much pot.
During their freshman year on the small New England
campus, each of them finds college life difficult yet filled with new
wonders that only freedom from high school can evoke.
Leaving behind their
pasts for a somewhat brighter (and higher) future and stumbling quite
a few times along the way, this novel is filled with all of the cliches
you'd expect a book about college freshmen to include. There's lots of
drugs, keg parties, debauchery and jealousy but there is a little bit of
depth to each character which just might be the saving grace for this
otherwise average novel. (AS)
