Rating: 
Summary: Inane and a Waste of Time
Review: Who would think such a stylish writer for The New York Times would put her name on such a piece of chicklit drivel? The book is a total waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: 3X Terrible
Review: This is the first time I have felt compelled to write a review, but this book was horrible. The lead character was so pathetic a toss salad could have pulled the wool over her eyes. The only funny thing (although not intentionally funny) was that the lead character thought she was smart,bright and sassy even though she came off as living a boring and pedestrian life while waiting around on her cheating boyfriend despite the fact that she worked at a happening New York magazine. Furthermore, who could not predict the outcome of her gay male friend and his self-denial and final illness. Please!! Been there, done that in many other books and stories. Although I hate to throw any book away, I am not mean enough to force this on the people at Goodwill.
Rating: 
Summary: TV's "Sex and the City" in novel form
Review: Here we have a woman who is everything the Taliban would hate: educated, independent, sexually liberated, and having a problem with her fiance wanting more than one marriage partner. This is the story of how this woman handles the discovery that the man she has dated since high school is engaged to two other women. If this isn't a "Sex and the City" episode, it should be. I say this because the heroine is in exactly the same environment as the ladies of that show. While New York City is certainly big enough to hold lots of stories, but this one has a career and love life just like those women. I will also state that this is not a bad thing, as the story is an amusing read about life in a city I have never visited, and possibly never will. I enjoyed it very much. You get to see every thought that goes through her head as she finds she's being dumped. Yes, there is the self-pity, but you also see a cattiness that she thinks, but not says, to one of the gorgeous other fiances as they meet. And how she picks over the ex's WASP family that she only tolerated during the engagement is wonderful in it's unfairness. The bad parts are some predictability with the plot. You can guess what happens to her gay male soul-mate. You can also predict the outcome when the ex- gets together for "one more try". And while she thumbs her nose at just about everybody who has more money than she does, she also looks down on just about anybody who is not as "cultured" (New York City style) as she is. I consider myself well-read and have seen a lot of plays, etc., but I'd probably not make the cut with her because I'm just not up on my foie gras or the right wines to order. But this should not deter the reader from giving it a try.
Rating: 
Summary: Big Fat Yawner...
Review: Ho-hum. Witty? No, she's not. Not one sentence of this
book is actually witty. She stumbles all over herself TRYING
to be witty, and does not succeed. There are so many punch lines that fall flat, you find yourself wincing as you reach the end of a sentence, cause you know what's coming.,...something painfully anti-climactic. Now, for real wit, read Rachel Cusk..."In The Country" (I think that's the name of the book) or "New Orleans Mourning" by Julie Smith...those are about single women and they are very, very wry, very amusing, very funny...and yes, witty. She had to have gotten this huge tome of boredom published because she "knows" the NY magazine scene.
I thought I'd enjoy it, but after I got into it I realized I didn't give a damn, Scarlet.
Rating:
Summary: Whiney, boring and done to death
Review: After eagerly awaiting this book that was so well reviewed by the New York Times (where Witchel writes occasionally and more importantly her husband Frank Rich is a top columnist), I was appalled that such pedestrian writing could pass for wit in the logrolling world of publishing. The one-trick-pony of the fiance who's triple timing her is a dead horse early on, but the author continues to kick it throughout. The heroine is whiney, selfish, shallow and of dubious ethics (love how she rationalizes not bothering to go to her best friend's funeral). Pulling on the tired drama of the gay friend dying of AIDS doesn't add any nobility to this man-hungry social climber. Having read Ms. Witchells dissections of more successful editors in the Homes sections of the Times, it's not too difficult to see how such 'fiction' style comes easily to her.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as bad as they say
Review: Take this book with you to the beach or poolside. I polished it off in a few hours. Anyone coveting the whirlwind life of an up-and-coming New York magazine editor should devour this just as quickly. So what if it's a story that's been done ad nauseam--"20-something confronts career/dating/life with wry humor"? If all you want is a readable diversion, it shouldn't matter.
Rating:
Summary: very good --- not your typical "chick lit" at all!!!
Review: Set in the 1980s, Me Times Three captures the times very well in this tale of Sandra, engaged to her high school sweetheart, who discovers he is engaged to two other women at the same time. She breaks it off and spends the next year trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Buckington Ross, descendant of Betsy Ross, was Sandra's lifeline to American royalty, where she would finally mix with all the right people at all the right country clubs. She has the requisite gay best friend (Paul), but in the 1980s, there are far more problems involved with that. Not much is known about HIV or AIDS, and when Paul gets the disease, the extent of the lies he has told to live his life is revealed. The stages of his disease shocks her out of her own problems and into his. Sandra is selfish and at times unlikable -- she social-climbs like Uriah Heep on a bad day. But nobody deserves what she goes through, and nobody certainly deserves what Paul goes through. Sandra matures as she struggles to help her friend in a truly helpless situation. That's what makes this book worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Have we read this book before?
Review: While the writing, itself, is witty, I can't say the same for the story. This story of a single New York woman with a gay male best friend and a disappointing love life has been written (and filmed) before with less predictability. I kept waiting to be surprised and never was. You can finish the book in your head 200 pages before Witchel finishes it on paper. Because Witchel has a witty, and often wicked, turn-of-phrase, I'd like to read something else she writes--something with a more original plotline and and more original characters.
Rating:
Summary: Cute, fun and a good beach read
Review: This is a fun, cute and fast read. If you read all of Judy Blume growing up, you will love this. It isn't great literature but it doesn't pretend to be.
Rating:
Summary: not a funny book
Review: This book which is sold as humor quickly turns into a disease book (AIDS). I was very depressed at the end and wished I had never picked it up. She needs a good copy editor to help her fix countless sentences that didn't quite make sense. She almost had something to say. I regretted buying it, but more so, reading it.
| 
