Carol Snow (1)

Just Like Me, Only Better is utterly delightful and perfect for light summer reading! Think the TV adaptation of The Starter Wife, only imagine the leading lady of middling years mistaken as the spitting image of Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. Carol Snow brings us a wonderfully amusing narrator with a rather heartbreaking post-divorce life who finds herself in a dream-come-true. Pay me (and take me shopping!) to just go out to dinner with a hot 20-something actor - who wouldn't seize that show more offer and run with it? ;) It was great to watch Veronica grow a backbone and gain back her self-respect from the characters who tried to bulldoze their way into her life.

This is a perfect chick lit read if you are in the mood for light and breezy laughter! :) show less

Carol Snow’s What Came First follows Laura, Vanessa and Wendy as they grapple with issues both familiar and foreign to many mothers. Laura and her bright, kind-hearted son, Ian, love their lives in suburban California. Born after Laura’s visit to a sperm bank nearly a decade before, the two-unit family would like nothing more than to welcome a third . . . but Laura, perpetually single, isn’t sure how to make that happen. Posting on a website designed to link families who may have show more conceived children from the same sperm donor, she eventually “meets” Wendy — a harried mother of twins.

Wendy’s son and daughter have major behavioral issues, a problem that drives her to seek out potential biological siblings to compare notes on her kids’ temper tantrums. After Wendy and Carol exchange notes and start their own research into their children’s DNA, they eventually find an answer to some of their questions — which leads them to Vanessa, a twenty-something trying to get a diamond from her live-in boyfriend. Ready to start a family of her own, Vanessa waits desperately for an engagement ring . . . but Eric seems no closer to committing than he did when they met.

All three women have trials, difficulties; no one’s life is perfect. And that’s what I loved about Snow’s novel dealing with fertility, motherhood, what it means to be a family — and what I always appreciate about her warm, rich and true-to-life characters. I probably related best to Laura, a type-A go-getter who can’t accept her family won’t grow. Her desire to have another baby seemed enviable rather than desperate, and I definitely felt her frustration and pain.

Where the story began and where it ended were completely different than I expected, and I love that What Came First surprised me from beginning to end. Though often light-hearted and very witty, Snow’s novel also raised questions about how families are formed and how love develops. In Wendy’s case, especially, I could see how difficult conceiving children who were not biologically “his” was for her husband, and these troubles were something I’d never considered before. I love a good slice of women’s fiction that also makes me think!

Fans of Snow will appreciate her take on love, relationships and moving forward. If you’ve never devoured a Carol Snow novel, you’re missing out — and What Came First is a great, feel-good place to start. show less

Two and a half stars. It's important to myself that I point out in reviews where I go the idea to read the book or where I picked it up, and the format of the book if it deviates from the normal library book or paperback. This--could have easily been placed on hold for two reasons: I was reading different fiction stories about cults, or I saw this on someone's TBR in my Goodreads feed. I want to say it's both and they occurred around the same time, but I can't for certain. I do remember show more thinking, "Oh, this person is interested in fictional cult stories? Oh, no, they just like YA friend stories, which I think are fantastic as a genre as well, and maybe they would like my favorite book." And I didn't get around to recommending it to them. Yeah, that's--yeah. Okay, solved. Onward.

The first half of this book is a character study. While the writing was vivid, I was indifferent but not bored enough to put it down. As stuff kept repeating, I realized idly I was missing something and was slowly disliking the book. Then, around page two hundred, this book gets a plot really fast. The book jacket makes this seem like a missing kid story. It is not--it's about kids whose parents forced them to become doomsday preppers.
I suddenly paid close attention and was annoyed that two totally different plots had been yoked together. I didn't fully understand until I finished the book and pouted at its unimpressive cover, and then it hit me: readers need to go through the whole character study of the first two hundred pages in order to fully understand the second half of the book. It's all there. The way Snow writes is brilliant, and I didn't see it at first at all. Why the excessive, over-the-top mentions of bubonic plague? Because people get sick with one on a massive scale. Why the weird, controlling, cult-member parents? Because they force their kids to join a tiny one with every intention of--yeah. Why all the odd focus on family? (Original snide remark redacted). And because it was a buildup to demonstrate just how creepy the Dunkle family was. One thing I really liked in this book was how the families all were from different socioeconomic backgrounds and just wound up squabbling about every little thing. That's what would happen in real life: you sit there bored, annoyed, and sad and scared during a plague, and things fall apart as you all bring out the worst in one another.

The Dunkle family naming conventions: they could easily point to certain characterization considering all their first names start with K. That noted, um, my dad's siblings and he all have first names starting with K and middle name starting with D. My late grandfather's first name starts with K, and my late grandmother's name started with D, so I smiled a little in recognition. And yeah, I might frown if it were made fun of. Plus there's a name that's been passed down for four generations in my family, and my siblings and I agreed awhile ago we'd continue it if able. So, I noticed all that in the book and was all, Daisy, stop making fun of their names.
The Dunkle family from the very start made me uneasy, although I couldn't explain why. Every time Kyle popped up, I felt like I needed a shower. And he kept showing up and getting creepier and creepier, and I wanted to scream in fear. Still couldn't explain why! Then his behavior hit the peak that it did and I wanted to vomit. I was grateful to myself for being creeped out the entire time, even if I couldn't tell why at first. And one of his sisters sighs about how it's such a cute little romance. NO, CREEPY CULT DAUGHTER, NO. I liked how the daughter who had wanted to go to a mainstream high school was characterized, and how little actions she took were really subtle foreshadowing. At first, I thought her characterization was just to lighten an increasingly dark story, but no, Snow's ability for foreshadowing is amazing. Every time Daisy hit her head in the morning and the littlest sister was all, "Watch your head," I smiled a little. Some of the interactions and quips had me laughing, even.

I think the ending was rushed and also bland. I was annoyed. I fully admit to being aware that I'm not the intended audience for this book, and I was expecting more than I got in some ways. Snow's writing skill makes me definitely curious about other projects of hers, and I do wonder if she's written anything for adults. I'm eager to find out. show less

This book was FUNNY! I mean I had a feeling it would be funny because of the premise but Veronica, some of the things she said were just hilarious! I loved the idea of a regular down on her luck single-mother, going through a hard time after a divorce diving into the world of glitz and glam and pretending to be a celebrity. It never gets old, someone being thrown into a completely new situation.

And she sure meets some characters out in Hollywood from the actress she's being the body-double show more for to the hairdresser she swaps gossip with. The people she meets on her journey, they could easily be two-dimensional but the author writes them in such a way that they have some personality behind the cliche you would expect.

What I really liked about this book was that not only is it funny, it's rather heartfelt, watching Veronica process her divorce and seeing her ex-husband move on, she has to re-find her place in the world. Another great thing in this book is there is a bit of romance! And I thought who she ended up with was a nice surprise! I just would have wished for a bit more wrap up at the end of the book, it ended a bit too quickly for me! Overall a very fun book! show less