As Long As She Needs Me
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
For ten long years, Oscar Campbell has done everything from picking up his boss's drycleaning to FedExing her tropical fish. His job as personal assistant to a legendary -- and temperamental -- publisher in New York City has given him more headaches than leg-ups. Yet none of Oscar's experiences has prepared him for his greatest challenge: planning his boss's wedding.
Juggling his unappreciated duties as a publishing assistant with those of a pro bono wedding planner, Oscar labors to pull together the event of the year without falling apart in the process. Help arrives in the form of popular wedding columnist Lauren LaRose, with whom Oscar strikes a bargain: his editorial expertise for her nuptial advice. As the two work together to manufacture the romances of others, they will stumble into one of their own.
Hilarious and wise, literate and charming, As Long As She Needs Me is a sparkling fable of love and luck in Manhattan.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This frothy and frolicsome first novel is a "musical comedy without the music," in P.G. Wodehouse's phrase. Oliver Campbell, a tall, gawky but handsome former English major, is trapped in the job of executive editorial assistant at Dawn Books. Lauren LaRose, a beautiful but burned-out journalist, pens "The Aisle of White," a popular monthly magazine column devoted to trendy theme weddings. At the nuptials of Oliver's college roommate, Oliver and Lauren are seated together at the Butt Table (the opposite of the Head Table). In their early 30s and weary of dating, both live solitary lives, but as the wedding winds down, Oscar draws Lauren onto the dance floor. Once back in New York, their attraction is in classic comedy fashion challenged by obstacles and misunderstandings. Dawn, Oliver's nightmare boss, commandeers his time, demanding that he plan every detail of her upcoming top-secret marriage to literary super-agent Gordon Fox. Taking Oliver's obsession with wedding plans as evidence that he is engaged, Lauren keeps her distance and endures a string of disastrous blind dates. Will the two ever manage to get together? Although the answer is never in doubt, getting there is a merry and manic dance through the cutthroat world of New York publishing and the insanity of contemporary "coordinated" weddings. Clever quips (some misfire, but there's always another coming up), insider information, swift pacing and a bright cast of secondary characters are the bubbles in an entertainment as effervescent as Perrier-Jouet.
