The Wise Women

August 1, 2021

In the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Chamberlain's The Last House on the Street, Kayla Carter is mourning the husband who died building their dream house in a North Carolina community as warnings from not one but two older women not to move into the house eventually lead to a story of prejudice and violence that rocked the community a half-century earlier (150,000-copy first printing). A librarian like her creator, debut novelist Jurczyk, Liesl Weiss is shocked to discover that a valuable manuscript has gone missing from The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections but is told not to raise a ruckus--but she starts investigating when a colleague goes missing as well. Getting readied for television by the BBC, May's debut novel, Wahala ("trouble"), features three British Nigerian women whose close friendship is blown to bits when a glamorous and ultimately venomous outsider insinuates herself into the group. In No. 1 New York Times best-selling Mitchard's The Good Son, Thea Demetriou must find a way to support her son emotionally when he returns home from prison after having committed a heinous crime. Patterson and Lupica join forces with The Horsewoman, the story of a mother and daughter who are both champion riders--and are up against each other in competitons leading to the Paris Olympics. In Shalvis's series starter, The Family You Make, Jane is dangerously stranded on a ski lift with Levi Cutler, who impulsively tells his parents by cellphone that she is his girlfriend--a charade she agrees to keep up when she finds herself falling for him and his warm, embracing family. Sorell follows up her well-rendered small-press debut, Mothers and Other Strangers, with Three Wise Women: an officious advice columnist and her two troubled adult daughters. In Steel's latest, a young woman who survived a neglectful childhood by hunkering down can remain Invisible no longer when her dream of becoming a film director unexpectedly puts her in front of the camera. Revisiting Perdita Street, the setting of Wiggs's beloved The Lost and Found Bookstore, Sugar and Salt makes love bloom between San Francisco baker Jerome "Sugar" Barnes and barbecue master Molly Salton, trying to forget an unhappy past in Texas.

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February 7, 2022
Sorell (Mothers and Other Strangers) returns with a layered story of New York City’s gentrifying outer boroughs and an advice columnist who tries to help her two grown daughters. Wendy Wise’s younger daughter, Clementine, learns her husband lied about purchasing the house they’ve been renting, and that he put her money into a beverage start-up. Shocked, she sends him packing, but soon faces eviction, which she worries will uproot their anxious six-year-old son. Her older sister, Barb, an architect who’s fought to add an art space to a luxury condo building in Brooklyn, worries her girlfriend might be cheating on her. Meanwhile, Wendy hasn’t told her daughters she’s been let go from her magazine, nor that she’s remarried and moved from Manhattan to a Florida retirement community. But sensing she’s needed, Wendy returns to help her daughters, hoping the gesture will help alleviate their long-held resentments of her for remarrying (and divorcing) so soon after the death of their father. Spurred on by a somewhat contrived set of coincidences, they try to figure where Clementine’s husband went and how to get the money back. Sorell does a fine job describing neighborhood tensions and the city’s real estate scene, though the story wraps up a bit too neatly. This gets the job done, but its pleasures are fleeting. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA.

February 15, 2022
Sorell continues her focus on mothers and daughters in this witty novel that's more lighthearted than Mothers and Other Strangers (2017). Advice columnist Wendy Wise hands out pithy but outdated guidance to her dwindling readership. Wendy's elder daughter, Barb, resents her mother for choosing her career over her daughters and forcing Barb into too much responsibility at a young age--a trend Barb has continued as an overworked architect, distressed over her role in gentrifying New York neighborhoods and spread financially thin (a fact she hides from her girlfriend). Meanwhile, Barb's younger sister, Clementine, has embraced Wendy's advice to let her husband handle the finances, and is now paying the price: he used the down payment for their house on his start-up, meaning Clementine and their son may have to leave their beloved home, school, and neighborhood. Wendy, avoiding her own issues, swoops in to help as the three women must confront their past, present, and future. While things maybe tie up a bit too perfectly, this is a breezy, fun read with just enough heft.

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March 15, 2022
When misfortune finds the three women of the Wise family, they are forced to wise up to their historic dysfunction. It begins with the dissolution of Clementine Wise's marriage, which comes with a heap of debt and threatens the careful life she's built for her 6-year-old son. Clementine's being in trouble is a call to action for her older sister, Barb, though Barb has overleveraged herself financially as well as in the volume of support she is able to give her loved ones and business associates. Swooping in to rescue them both is their mother, Wendy, a storied advice columnist recently edged out of her magazine gig and fresh into her third marriage. Though she initially seems like a narcissist bent on making up for past neglect, Wendy proves to be startlingly open-minded and humorously unpredictable in her meddling (one iffy but pivotal plot thread has her bonding with an Instagram influencer). The questions are: Will Barb forgive her mother for leaving her to largely raise Clementine in the wake of their father's untimely death? Will Clementine develop a backbone and pave her own way rather than doing what the other Wise women think is best for her? The answers are unsurprising. While the novel begins with lots of human complexity and daily-life detail, characters are soon giving honest, heartfelt speeches about changing their lifelong attitudes, and everyone is taking the sage advice of everyone else. The characters are warm and quirky in an enjoyably familiar way, and the settings--mostly a couple of lower-key White neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens--are nicely detailed. With tidy resolutions, this novel doesn't pack the punch of some of its peers, but it's a fine addition to the collection.

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