NEW RELEASE
Here I Go Again - Jen Lancaster (2013)
Lissy Ryder is a mean girl. In high school, she was the one you steered clear of lest she pick up on your weaknesses and make your life miserable. This behaviour carries into adulthood when, at 37, Lissy abruptly loses her job, her husband leaves her, and she finds herself back living with her parents, trying to figure out where things went so horribly wrong. While attending her 20th high school reunion, she meets up with former classmate Debbie (now known as Deva), who puts her mean-girl ways into perspective. Lissy finally begins to understand how her past behaviour has contributed to her present problems. With a bit of "new age" help from Deva, Lissy is given the opportunity to set things right in the past. She soon realises, however, that although she was able to right a few wrongs, she has also altered the lives of those she cares about, and not necessarily in a good way. Unlike her first novel, If You Were Here, Jen Lancaster's second novel takes a giant step away from her memoirs and feels more like actual fiction, rather than one of her memoirs with the names changed. The story is entertaining, humorous and well-written and the characters are perfection; those of you who grew up in the 80s will be transported back there as if it was only yesterday. Like Lissy Ryder, Jen Lancaster has gotten a fiction do-over and she's nailed it. (LEK)
Jen Lancaster is returning to fiction with Here I Go Again, reliving the hair-band days of high school. The synopsis says: "Twenty years after ruling the halls of her suburban Chicago high school, Lissy Ryder doesn't understand why her glory days ended. Back then, she was worshipped, beloved, feared. Present day, not so much. She's been pink-slipped from her high-paying job, dumped by her husband and kicked out of her condo. Now, at thirty-seven, she's struggling to start a business out of her parents' garage and sleeping under the hair-band posters in her old bedroom. Lissy finally realises karma is the only bitch bigger than she was. Her present is miserable because of her past. But it's not like she can go back in time and change who she was...or can she?" Here I Go Again is out in December.