One Flight Up
A Novel
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3.9 • 28 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
What happens after happily-ever-after fades? Can the answer be found one flight up?
India, Abby, Esme, and Monique have all been friends since their days at Manhattan’s Sibley School for Girls. From the outside, these four women—all grown up now—seem to be living ideal lives, yet each finds herself suddenly craving more.
India Chumley is a whip-smart divorce lawyer who routinely declines the marriage proposals of her charming French boyfriend, Julien. She’s taking the first plunge by moving in with him, but she’s keeping her own apartment—and keeping it a secret from him.
Abby Rosenfeld Adams is an irrepressibly upbeat gallery owner who married her WASP college sweet heart, a passionate but tormented sculptor. When she suspects he is cheating on her, she realizes that perhaps there’s more to life than reassuring her husband of his artistic brilliance.
Esme Sarmiento Talbot is a Colombian Scarlett O’Hara, bored with her proper Connecticut life and her tame, all-American husband. In order to satisfy her sensuality, she escapes to Manhattan and distracts herself with casual encounters.
A card-carrying member of Harlem’s thriving buppie-ocracy and a successful gynecologist, Monique Dawkins-Dubois is married to a powerful but dull financier who barely notices her anymore. When an attractive coworker beckons, Monique can’t help but be flattered.
The most straitlaced of them all, India is dismayed by her friends’ illicit activities. That is, until her ex-fiancé, the love of her life and the destroyer of her heart, reappears in New York— and she finds herself caught between the dependable man she thought was her future and the man she never quite let go of.
Dazzling and sexy, One Flight Up is an irresistible comedic romp through the boardrooms, bedrooms, and ballrooms of Manhattan and Paris.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
India Chumley, Abby Adams, Esme Talbot, and Monique Dawkins-Dubois have been friends since attending Sibley, an exclusive Manhattan prep school. Now that they are all grown up, they're discovering that their lives and relationships aren't quite what they'd expected. India is in a mildly satisfying but bland relationship with a French chef, Julien, while she works as a divorce lawyer and juggles the needs of her manic mother. Abby has subsumed her own artistic desires to support her perpetually insecure husband Nathaniel, but begins to question those choices when she discovers her husband's infidelity. Whereas Esme has never stopped cheating on her adoring husband Tim, because she feels that it keeps a relationship fresh; that all changes, however, when she meets billionaire playboy Michael Alders. Monique and her husband haven't had sex in years, but have an otherwise happy union, until she starts a heated affair with a coworker that leaves her blind to eventual charges of sexual harassment. It would be easy for readers to dismiss this as another look at four privileged Manhattanites and their midlife sexcapades but this is a surprisingly good look at the struggles of women in relationships. While it is definitely heavy on the luxury and brand-name dropping, the characters are funny, the writing is deft, and the story is oddly compelling.
Customer Reviews
Mind candy
Not horrible, not compelling...interestingly enough characters and story line, although predictable. I read it on the beach, so I got just what I needed and expected. Susan Fales-Hill is a strong writer. Hope to see more depth from her - as with her memoir - with her next project.
Wishing this book would last forever
I LOVE this book. Monique is Tasha Smith a la (why did I get married) and India is Tracee Ellis Ross. Totally screen worthy.