Best-Staged Plans...Review

About the book:
As a professional home stager, Sandy Sullivan is an expert at transforming cluttered rooms into attractive houses ready for sale. If only reinventing her life were as easy as choosing the perfect paint color. She's eager to put her family's suburban Boston home on the market, to downsize, and to simplify her own life. But she must first deal with her foot-dragging husband and her grown son, who has moved back home after college to inhabit the basement "bat cave."

After reading them the riot act, Sandy takes a job staging a boutique hotel in Atlanta recently acquired by her best friend's boyfriend. The good news is that she can spend time with her recently married daughter, Shannon, in Atlanta. The bad news is that Shannon finds herself heading to Boston for job training, leaving Sandy and her southern son-in-law, Chance, as reluctant roommates.

If that's not complicated enough, Sandy begins to suspect that her best friend's boyfriend may be seeing another woman on the side.

Filled with characters who are fresh and original, yet recognizable enough to live in your neighborhood plus plenty of great tips and tricks for fixing up houses, and lives this is a wise and witty story of letting go and moving on.

Liked it, didn't love it.  I never really connected with Sandy and I found her to be selfish, shallow and whiny.  All she cared about was herself and selling her house. There was no compassion for her husband or children, only disdain for the fact that they didn't do things the way or as fast as she wanted them to.

The narrative was conversational and the staging tips were fun and added an interesting note.  There were moments of laugh out loud funny humor, but overall the story was shallow and felt unfinished.  When Sandy meets Naomi, there was an opportunity for added depth, but Sandy simply gives her a makeover and job.  Naomi's story is also never actually concluded, but pushed aside for the girlfriends-band-together-to-make-a-man-miserable ending.

A light, fluffy, humorous beach read.  Nothing more.  Perfect for an afternoon escape where you don't want to concentrate on anything.

Thanks to my local library for having a copy I could borrow. You can purchase your own copy here.

Read 7/11

* *
2/5 Stars

Comments

  1. Maybe you have to be at a certain point in your life to "get" Sandy, but I could relate to her. I liked this book more than you did.

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  2. I just finished this book and enjoyed it much more than you did. I found it had much more substance, humor and insight than just a light, fluffy, humorous read. Sandy is a character that many women will relate to.

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