Simply Divine
Twentysomething magazine journalist Jane has enough  stress--between breaking up with her boyfriend, falling in love with a  man who leaves the country the next morning, and being generally  bemused by her weight. The last thing Wendy Holden's heroine needs is  glamorous socialite Champagne D'Vyne, who pops effervescently and  annoyingly into her life. "Champagne's combination of stunning beauty  and astounding vacuousness seemed to have struck some kind of chord  with public and media alike. The Lost Chord, a despairing Jane  supposed." Meanwhile, her best friend Tally's crumbling ancestral manse  in Lower Bulge is about to be sold off unless Jane can find a rich  knight to come to the rescue and, while she's at it, nab one for  herself.Simply Divinesparkles with sharp, acerbic wit as the  author pierces high society's extravagant pretensions and leaves the  reader choking with laughter.Tally always had had superior eyesight. This honing of the optics came, Jane imagined, courtesy of the genetic inheritance of generations of Venerys scanning the horizons of their vast acreage. Being grand,  however, had its downside too. Like the girls atFabulous, Tally  had always suffered the most agonizing of periods. Blue blood was  evidently more painful.Holden launches the reader into a world of double-barreled socialites (including Pandora Smellie-Lewes, Princess Loulou Fischtitz, and Fluffy Fronte-Bottom) and the offices of theGorgeousandFabulousmagazines where only girls with slim calves and tinted  bikini lines get onto the front covers and, for that matter, through  the front door. In her first satire Wendy Holden proves her superior  social optics.--Nicola Perry