Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I'm So Happy For You by Lucinda Rosenfeld


I'm so Happy for You is about best friends or is it?

Publisher Description

What if your best friend, whom you've always counted on to flounder in life and love (making your own modest accomplishments look not so bad), suddenly starts to surpass you in every way?

Wendy's best friend, Daphne, has always been dependably prone to catastrophe. And Wendy has always been there to help. If Daphne veers from suicidal to madly in love, Wendy offers encouragement. But when Daphne is suddenly engaged, pregnant, and decorating a fabulous town house in no time at all, Wendy is...not so happy for her. Caught between wanting to be the best friend she prides herself on being and crippling jealousy of flighty Daphne, Wendy takes things to the extreme, waging a full-scale attack on her best friend-all the while wearing her best, I'm-so-happy-for-you smile-and ends up in way over her head.

Rosenfeld has a knack for exposing the not-always-pretty side of being best friends--in writing that is glittering and diamond-sharp. I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU is a smart, darkly humorous, and uncannily dead-on novel about female friendship.

The main character, Wendy spends half the book bitching about what she doesn't have after her slacking friend suddenly pulls herself together and finds a handsome, rich, although annoying man. Wendy's jealously over her friend's good fortune gives a bad name to women's friendships. While I know the book was written in dark humor and I know that there are many women out there like this, I don't personally know any.

What I love about it: I love the e-mails that trickle through the group of girlfriends. Reading the emails back and forth was funny and real. I love how everyone spoke nicely and very PC in the email but were catty afterward. Very real life. As much as I despise each character at times, I also liked them. You can relate to all the women in the book at one time or another. I just had trouble figuring out if they were friends or foes.

Feeling envious over a friend's good fortune is ridiculous to me. If you are "true" friends with someone jealousy never arises. It is a wasted emotion anyway.

Women's friendship should be a healthy place to fall. Each women in my life that I call friend, is someone I love and respect and would only want good for. I would never wish someone well and secretly wish differently. Grrrr...

1 comment:

  1. I've been reading reviews on this book and can't wait to read the book.
    I agree with your assessment of true friendship; real friends would always be happy for their friends good fortune!!

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