Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty
A Novel
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3.9 • 631 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • From the bestselling author of The Devil Wears Prada and When Life Gives You Lululemons comes a highly entertaining, sharply observed novel about sisters, their perfect lives . . . and their perfect lies.
“Goes down like an ice-cold guilty pleasure on a hot beach-reading day.”—USA Today
A seat at the anchor desk of the most-watched morning show. Recognized by millions across the country, thanks in part to her flawless blond highlights and Botox-smoothed skin. An adoring husband and a Princeton-bound daughter. Peyton is that woman. She has it all.
Until . . .
Skye, her sister, is a stay-at-home mom living in a glitzy suburb of New York. She has degrees from all the right schools and can helicopter-parent with the best of them. But Skye is different from the rest. She’s looking for something real and dreams of a life beyond the PTA and pickup.
Until . . .
Max, Peyton’s bright and quirky seventeen-year-old daughter, is poised to kiss her fancy private school goodbye and head off to pursue her dreams in film. She’s waited her entire life for this opportunity.
Until . . .
One little lie. That’s all it takes. For the illusions to crack. For resentments to surface. Suddenly the grass doesn’t look so green. And they’re left wondering: will they have what it takes to survive the truth?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We always think other people’s lives are perfect. But when the author of The Devil Wears Prada is at the wheel, you know that shiny veneers are about to get tarnished—and drama will be served. A Manhattan TV anchor and her bohemian sister both have plenty of money and the kind of personal and professional success that induces envy…until it all falls apart. Lauren Weisberger’s entertaining novel is packed with the kind of cheeky details that have made her books bestsellers: unapologetic Manhattan namedropping, gloriously bad behavior, and conspicuous consumption. But this novel, set in a chichi suburban town called Paradise, also focuses on the helicopter parent’s crime of choice: paying off college admissions officers. Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty gives us everything we want in a beach read, along with insightful thoughts about women and work, child-raising, marriage, and aging. Get ready to learn a lot about Botox.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The dispiriting latest from Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada) is a paint-by-numbers tale of two wealthy sisters' self-generated problems. While Manhattanite and TV news anchor Peyton Marcus covers a scandal involving parents cheating on college admissions, Peyton's husband, Isaac, is charged by the FBI for paying a "college fixer" to get their vlogger daughter, Max, into Princeton, having taken the fall for Peyton's transgression. The school rescinds Max's acceptance, leaving her with no options for college. Meanwhile, Peyton's formerly free-spirited sister, Skye, who is now raising an adopted daughter with her bland Australian architect husband in the nearby suburban town of Paradise, has maxed out a secret credit card on an ambitious charity project. After news breaks of Isaac's arrest, her major donor leaves her twisting in the wind. Peyton and Max, meanwhile, retreat to Paradise, where they adopt chickens, make friends, and adjust their expectations. Along the way, Weisberger gets in some digs at suburban mommy life and its youth-obsessed lifestyle of Botox and "vampire facials," and regularly name-drops upscale stores and clothing lines, but it's low hanging fruit and it doesn't feel like there's much life in here. The result is not light and fizzy enough to be entertaining, or consequential enough to move readers.
Customer Reviews
So. Good.
Wow! I couldn’t put it down! So good!
Just keep moving
This book was annoying and predictable. Nothing was surprising or exciting to read within it. The references to overpriced brands and shallow life advice, in nearly every other line, further irritated me. Very disappointing.
A surefire hit!
Best selling author Lauren Weisberger delivers a surefire hit with Where the Grass is Green and the Girls are Pretty. This straight from the headlines, laugh out loud funny novel skewers both suburban and city life as realistic characters deal with the problems they create.
Peyton Marcus, New York morning show anchor (think Savannah Guthrie), sees her carefully curated life begin to fall apart when she reports on the newest college admission bribery scandal. Within hours, her husband Isaac is led away in handcuffs, and she is part of the biggest story on all channels.
Her sister Skye has moved her family to Paradise, a suburb full of Lululemoned yoga moms and their tequila importing investment banker husbands. Skye, a veteran of charity work in Uganda, tries to reinvent herself as a helicopter mom but fails. A new project has reenergized her but may be affected by Isaac’s decisions.
Also caught up in the whirlwind news story in Max, Peyton’s teenage daughter who didn’t want to attend Princeton until she couldn’t. Free from the Ivy League, she has to discover what she really wants to do instead of rebelling against her parents’ choices for her.
The destructive secrets Peyton and Skye are keeping from their husbands and each other will eventually be revealed in a satisfying conclusion. Where the Grass is Green and the Girls are Pretty sparkles with humor and satire. You’ll love it as much as I did! 5 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley, Random House and Lauren Weisberger for this ARC.