The bestselling author of The First Wives Club returns with another delightful modern-day battle of the sexes--dished up with scathing wit, hilarity, and plenty of attitude. There's an old saying that life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. That's certainly true for 28-year-old Kate Jameson who's worked hard to cross the bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan and now works just as hard to keep her sophisticated new friends away from her old neighborhood ''posse, '' the so-called Bitches of Bushwick. With her cute apartment in Chelsea, her cold but erudite professor boyfriend and her satisfying career as a school psychologist, Kate has put the heartbreak of past lousy boyfriends behind her and tries to stay aloof from the marriage mania that has infected her old gang from Brooklyn. With the imminent engagement of her best friend Bina, it seems that Kate will be the only single girl left in the ''posse.'' But when Bina's intended gets the coldest of feet at the last minute, every part of Kate's orderly life is thrown into disarray. Before she knows what has hit her, her debonair Manhattan friends have colluded with the ''Bitches'' and devised a plan guaranteed to get Bina married and drive Kate crazy. The key to the scheme is ''Dumping Billy.'' Too good looking for his own good, Billy dates legions of girls, dumps them--and every single one of them gets married to the next guy she dates. The trick is to get Billy to date Bina, dump Bina, and get Bina married off. But, in Olivia Goldsmith's fiction, as in life, nothing goes according to plan.
From Publishers Weekly
Kate Jameson has outgrown her Brooklyn gang: Bina, Bunny, Barbie and Bev, aka the Bitches of Bushwick. While the Bs still go for French manicures and (gasp) matching furniture, Kate has embraced the urbane life. She has a Chelsea apartment and a neat job as school psychologist at Andrew Country Day ''in the best neighborhood in Manhattan.'' But when Kate meets bad boy bar owner Billy Nolan in her natal borough, she instantly wants to get Brooklyn back into the girl. He's hot for her, too, but fate intervenes in the form of Kate's best friend, Elliot Winston. Elliot and his boyfriend, Brice, are determined to keep Kate from committing romantic folly yet again. In a plot twist that the late Goldsmith (The First Wives Club, etc.) might have called Queer Eye for the Straight Goy, Elliot notices that every time Billy dumps a girl, she marries the next guy she dates. So instead of following heart and loins to Billy's bed, Kate helps Elliot engineer a match between Billy and Bina, whose putative fiancΓ©, Jack, went to Hong Kong without giving her the anticipated diamond. Minor complications abound, as Bina dates Billy but falls for someone else, and Kate's burning jealousy blinds her to the truth long after the reader sees it. Goldsmith's fans will perhaps forgive the almost farcical absence of reality; others may resent not only the illogic but also the stereotyping of gays, Jews, working-class Catholics and nearly everybody else. If Goldsmith had affection for her characters, she hid it well.
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From Booklist
Katherine ''Kate'' Jameson is proud of how she made the break from her Brooklyn roots: she earned her Ph.D and now works in an exclusive Manhattan school. She has never introduced her old, tacky Brooklyn group to her new, sophisticated friends, especially Elliot, whose gay sensibilities would find the Brooklyn brood uncouth--or so she assumes. Her worlds collide, however, when her Brooklyn friend Bina gets dumped instead of engaged. Bina breaks down in front of Elliot and his classy partner, Brice, and to Kate's amazement, they prove very helpful. Bina, despite her provincial ways, has always been a wonderful friend, which is why Kate blanches at the plan Elliot and Brice hatch: Bina must date the gorgeous Billy Nolan, get dumped, and then marriage to her ex will surely follow. As the shenanigans unfold, Kate hopes Bina doesn't get hurt along the way and that her own feelings for Billy stay beneath the surface. This is Goldsmith's final novel, released only months after her untimely death this past January, and it contains all of the elements that have made her so famous and loved in the first place: wacky heroines exacting revenge on the male species. Fun, silly, and sure to please her fans. Mary Frances Wilkens
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