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At age thirty-three, Penelope "Pepper" Bradford has no career, no passion and no children. Her intrusive parents still treat her like a child. Moving into the Chelmsford Arms with her fiancé Rick, an up-and-coming financier, and joining the co-op board give her some control over her life--until her parents take a gut dislike to Rick and urge Pepper to call off the wedding. When, the week before the wedding, she glimpses a trail of desperate text messages from Rick's obsessed female client, Pepper realizes that her parents might be right.She looks to her older neighbors in the building to help decide whether to stay with Rick, not realizing that their marriages are in crisis, too. Birdie and George's bond frays after George is forced into retirement at sixty-two. And Francis alienates Carol, his wife of fifty years, and everyone else he knows, after being diagnosed with an inoperable heart condition. To her surprise, Pepper's best model for love may be a clandestine romance between Caleb and Sergei, a porter and a doorman.Carnegie Hill is a belated-coming-of-age novel about sustaining a marriage--and knowing when to walk away. It chronicles the lives of wealthy New Yorkers and the staff who serve them, as they suffer together and rebound, struggle to free themselves from family entanglements, deceive each other out of love and weakness, and fumble their way to honesty.… (more)
User reviews
The story was a shade wide of believable. A newbie with no career, no credits, and less experience elected to the Board of a stodgy old coop in NYC. I suppose it happens but gaining the upper hand and taking over, that’s is a large stretch. A husband who can’t keep it in his pants, a gay couple struggling not to be outed while wanting to be “out”. Everything in this book was out of nowhere and everything gets thrown into the mix and thrown at the wall to see if anything will stick.
I received this book from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.
It is a very good basis for a story - it's just rather long winded and the characters didn't draw me in, some were rather predictable.
Writing about many owners in an apartment building is a tough task so I would read Vatner's next novel in the hopes he pares down his story to one or two less directions and more character development.
Thank you NetGalley, author and publisher an advanced copy of this book.