Feminista

July 13, 2009
This crazed black romantic comedy from journalist and author Kennedy (Bling
) charts the rocky course of Sydney Zamora, a very angry single. The Cachet
magazine writer decides, at 33, that she's got to get married before her eggs sour. So her rich sister hires Mitzi Berman, a successful Manhattan matchmaker, to find Sydney's Mr. Right. Mitzi's challenge, as she sees it, is transforming fierce feminista Sydney into a dress-wearing girly girl (says Mitzi: “If you don't make some radical changes in your behavior, you will die alone”). Catching Sydney's eye is the fabulous Max Cooper, the spoiled playboy heir of a department store fortune, but can her politics mix with his background? Truly, their path to connubial bliss is barbed with obstacles, charted with sarcastic glee by Kennedy, a pioneer of chick lit's naughty stepsister—bitch lit.

August 15, 2009
Kennedy (Bling, 2004.) tweaks the template to create a beautiful, biracial, brainy heroine, far hipper than chick-lit is used to.

Celebrity journalist Sydney Zamora is also self-centered, mostly friendless, mean, aggressive and deeply wounded (all will be explained on that last front by novel's end). In her early 30s, Sydney decides to get serious and find a man to marry and father her children. All those artists, actors and waiters who can't afford her lifestyle are banished from her line of vision. And thanks to a birthday gift from her sister Liz, Sydney now has New York's premier matchmaker on her side. But while Mitzi Berman is working on a Mr. Right, Sydney is having a light fling with Max. She thinks he's a doorman at Harvey's, New York's most exclusive department store, but he's actually heir to the Harvey's fortune, playing along with the misunderstanding. Once Max had great fun doling out"it" bags in return for blowjobs from models, but now he's in love with Sydney and is afraid her professed contempt for elitism—which doesn't seem to hamper her buying into its trappings—will drive her away if she learns his true status. Mitzi sends Sydney on a few disastrous dates (she's not very nice), she loses her job (she's not very nice), and she dumps Max (she's still not very nice). Can this seriously flawed protagonist work it out, get her man and win her readers' sympathy? Kennedy's portrait of brash, abrasive Sydney is sometimes funny but more often troubling. Her aggression is blamed on her feminism, and that"problem" is solved when she acquiesces to her innate desire to be taken care of by a strong man. Sydney claims to disdain materialism, yet the novel trades in the usual consumerist fantasies of commercial women's fiction.

For all the trash talking and politicizing, in essence as frothy and predictable as a fairy tale.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2009
Sydney Zamora has rebuilt her life and sculpted her body after a humiliating breakup. She doesn't need anybody else, right? Wrong. After seeing her friends coupling up, Sydney wants a relationship on demand but insists on doing everything possible to ensure that she will not have one. Determined to change things, she decides to take some advice (and criticism) from a prominent matchmaker for the wealthy. Enter Max Cooper, a rich bachelor with relationship issues of his own, who becomes a foil for Sydney's version of a self-made woman. Girl meets boy with mixed results. VERDICT Kennedy's ("Bling") retelling of "The Taming of the Shrew" mixed with a dose of pop psychology features some edgy content that makes this inappropriate for teens interested in chick lit, and readers who enjoy fluffier takes on that genre will be disappointed. But readers interested in strong female protagonists and heartier women's fiction will be willing to join Sydney on her journey.Anastasia Diamond-Ortiz, Cleveland P.L.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.