Review: She is Not Lovely
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 7, 2014
I picture author Lauren Lane writing in her Manhattan studio apartment, with her husband and small fluffy dog.  She writes about living in 700 square feet -- maybe her Pomeranian plays the friend who betrays the main character.  Her name is Stephanie, and she has some issues she's been sweeping under the carpet for three years.  To complicate her life further, why not -- it's not going so well as it is -- she agrees to participate as a "girlfriend" in a romantic charade with an attractive, wealthy fellow student in exchange for summer housing with him.  The arrangement frees her from sleeping on the sofa of a comically cramped apartment with its roaches, rat-traps and former cheater boyfriend (and the young woman, Leah, who cheated with him).At one point, Stephanie defends the plotline of My Fair Lady, which this book's plot mirrors for a while.  Happily, Lauren Lane has fixed in this book what I found objectionable about that plot -- that the housekeeper has to go all in with the polished accent and proper manners, or nothing, for love.  Stephanie casts off her old self to make her pretend romance work, to fit in and look compatible, but it's a one-month arrangement.  How will it resolve?Nice work from the Manhattan writing studio!