Here I Go Again

Starred review from November 5, 2012
Mean Girls meets Back to the Future as bestselling memoirist Lancaster (Bitter Is the New Black) makes her second foray into fiction (after If You Were Here). "Every high school has a Lissy Ryderâyou know, the girl who's absolutely untouchable," she muses on the first page. As in: boyfriend stealer, head cheerleader, the girl you hated but secretly wanted to be. And by the second chapter, Lissy may finally be getting her karmic payback: her husband asks for a divorce, and she loses her PR job and moves back in with her parents. Mix in one hellish 20th high school reunion and a New Age classmate with a special potion (who's changed her name from Debbie to "Deva" and created a spiritual guidance industry), and suddenly Lissy's back to 1991. Armed with an insight she didn't possess then, Lissy aims to make up for being such an awful teenager. But in so doing, will she, Ã la Back to the Future's Marty McFly, mess up the futureânot only for herself but for others? The author explores that concept in several different eventualities for all involved. Lancaster's as adept at fiction as she is at telling her own storiesâno matter what she's writing, it's scathingly witty and lots of fun. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group.

Starred review from November 1, 2012
In a whimsical twist on the Back to the Future scenario, a bully returns to her high school days to right some wrongs. At 17, Lissy Ryder was the Mean Girl of Lyons Township High in suburban Chicago. As head cheerleader and girlfriend of the football team captain, Duke, she had a clique of cool girls in her thrall, and she persecuted anyone who was different or nonconformist. Now 37, Lissy, a publicist, lives only to overspend. After she's fired by her PR firm for shirking, her husband, Duke, stops covering her massive debts and asks for a divorce. She's gained a few pounds since moving back to her parents' house and is not looking forward to the 20-year reunion of LTH's class of '92. Hoping to network with her former sycophants, she's appalled to find that, without exception, her victims have outclassed and outperformed her. Amy, a girl Lissy mocked for her long nose, is now a plastic surgeon to the stars. One-time hippie outcast Debbie is now Deva, a New-Age entrepreneur. Brian, a dorky but attractive neighbor Lissy dumped for Duke, is an Internet couponing mogul. At the reunion, Lissy is the pariah. When Deva gives her a rare Incan potion, Lissy thinks it's a hangover cure, until she wakes up in her parents' house--in 1991! Lissy seizes this opportunity to avoid karmic missteps, dialing down the meanness. Back in the future, Lissy is not only happily hitched to Duke, but as the CEO of a thriving Chicago PR firm, is supporting him. She has it all, including the Birkin bag and the Gold Coast town house. However, now her victims are failures: Brian toils in a grim cubicle, the plastic surgeon is a trailer-trash drunk, etc. How can Lissy rectify the unintended consequences of her well-meaning do-over? The answer, while subject to many of the logical sinkholes typical of parallel-universe tales, is still unexpected enough for a fitting and none too treacly close. Quantum physics was never funnier. A great read.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2013
Occasionally hilarious, Lancaster's second novel chronicles the metamorphosis of Lissy Ryder, former high school cheerleader and ruler of the mean girls. Initially assured of her own greatness, it is only after being snubbed, told off, and even pushed at her 20th high school reunion that Lissy recognizes the consequences of her lifelong cruelty. One of the classmates she tormented, now a practitioner of mysticism, sends the former queen bee back in time for a do-over. Lissy sets out to be nicer this time around but is surprised to find that she must also deal with a changing present. This book is narrated by the author, but its somewhat predictable plot might have been better served by a more expressive narrator with a larger repertoire of voices; often it is the author's word choice, rather than the way she speaks lines of dialog, that differentiates the novel's characters. VERDICT Replete with pop culture references and peppered with coarse language, this title is recommended for larger fiction collections.--Nicole Williams, Rochelle Park P.L., NJ

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2012
Lancaster's follow-up to If You Were Here (2011) is a charming comedy in the vein of movies like Big and 13 Going on 30. Twenty years after she ruled her high school with an iron fist, Lissy Ryder finds herself out of work and dumped by her husband, Duke, who was her high-school sweetheart. Lissy decides to start her own PR firm and attends her high-school reunion in the hopes of drumming up business. She's chagrined to find that her now successful schoolmates are still smarting from her high-school cruelty and want nothing to do with her. Only earth-mother Deva deigns to speak to Lissy, offering a solution to her woes: drink a potion that will send her back into the past to undo the misery she caused her classmates. Lissy gamely accepts the challenge, but when she returns to her new present, she's shocked to find how much her life, as well as the lives of her classmates, has changed, and not necessarily for the better. Readers will find it easy to root for the frank and funny heroine of this winsome, whimsical tale. Lancaster's downright fun novel is chick lit at its best.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)