I've just started this one about a desperate housewife who doesn't seem to fit in. After a surprise invite to the meanest big-girls' house, Kate arrives to find her hostess dead on the floor with a knife poking out of her back.

She then decides to spice up her boring life by investigating the murder. It reads to me like a very dull episode of Desperate Housewives with some flashbacks to the past thrown in for added tedium. I don't know if I'll finish this because, as the book goes on and on, I'm finding myself liking Kate less and less. Her longing for a past almost-lover because her current life is so boring isn't exactly sympathy inducing stuff. Poor, poor Kate. She's married to a guy who works so hard to pay for their mini-mansion (while Kate stays home with the kiddies) that he falls asleep before satisfying her. The nerve of the rotten guy!

Another thing bugging me are the constant jabs at healthy eating and the people who promote it, like it's a snobbish thing to eat veggies, fruit and nuts! Note to author: it's actually cheaper to eat the good healthy stuff in the long run and the short run if you know how to shop & can be bothered to learn how to cook, that packaged junk is overpriced. The author thinks it funny to stuff her fictional kids with Cheetos and sugared crap while making fun of the "organic crowd". Really, how hard is it to do 20 seconds of planning and stick some fruit or carrots in your bag before going to the park so your kids won't annoy you with whines of "I'm hungry" driving you to raid the nearest convenience store because you can't stand the whining one freaking minute more? This just makes the heroine appear like a thoughtless, disorganized person. As someone with a very busy life (and a job!) and with a child allergic to most of that processed crapola and as someone who finds the childhood obesity epidemic quite sad, I find these jabs offensive and ignorant. Well, it looks like I just talked myself out of finishing this one!

Amazon Info:
Goodnight Nobody is bestselling author Jennifer Weiner's attempt at writing a mystery, with a healthy dose of the author's chick lit sensibilities thrown in for good measure. While this Desperate Housewives meets Sex in the City murder mystery won't make readers shake in their Manolo Blahniks, it will provide the obligatory humor and compassion to which fans of Weiner's Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and Little Earthquakes have grown accustomed.

Kate Klein is a feisty, charmingly insecure Connecticut housewife who trades in a life of late-night karaoke sing-a-longs and West Village brunches with her best friend Janie for a world of mini-vans and Mommy and Me pilates classes. Life in Upchurch, Connecticut, heats up when Kate discovers picture-perfect wife and mother Kitty Cavanaugh dead on the pickled maple hardwood floor of her recently remodeled kitchen. A former chronicler of celebrity gossip, Kate takes it upon herself to solve the mystery of Kitty's murder and the disappearance of Lexi Hagen-Holdt, another Upchurch supermom. Along the way, the mysteries and disappointments in Kate's personal life begin to unravel, including her marriage to the kind-yet-uptight Ben, and her unresolved crush on Evan McKenna, a former neighbor with whom a one-night tryst ended in disaster. Thrown in for comic relief, and perhaps to show the depth of Weiner's talents as a writer, are Kate's twin boys and adorably sophisticated 5-year old daughter Sophie ("Sophie was sitting on the toilet, applying lipstick and waiting her turn...").

Goodnight Nobody is chock full of plot twists and turns which can be overwhelming and superfluous. However, Weiner's charm and grace are usually enough to rescue readers from these moments of confusion, and reaffirm our commitment to this endearing contemporary voice. --Gisele Toueg

RELEASE NOTES:

Mailing off to a potential new bookcrosser via .

received from www.paperbackswap.com

adding to my Jennifer Weiner collection.