Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty
A Novel
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3.9 • 674 Ratings
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- $9.99
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!
Grass is green and the girls are pretty
Way too many bragging nonessential details and GOOD GOD, get to the point! Rich woman problems and got caught buying her kid’s place at Princeton. The only reason I read the whole thing to the end is because the book was clearanced at $4.99 and I don’t like wasting money.
Ninjabunnay
Off putting
Sometimes authors can get too preachy and politically correct also showing their left leaning predilections. I found it difficult to focus on the story because I was clearly a person this author disliked.