How to be Single

August 25, 2008
The debut novel of former Sex and the City
story editor Tuccillo will most likely appeal to fans of the TV series simply because it’s a look-alike. The star here is Julie Jenson, a single 38-year-old woman living in New York and searching for love. When her three friends aren’t any help, Julie travels the world to discover the reasoning behind the single life. Judy Greer’s voice is eerily similar to that of Sarah Jessica Parker’s. Listeners will be hard pressed not to picture the actresses of the show as the story plays out. Greer’s delivery is strong and unabashed and will surely appeal to female listeners. The biggest downside is that it’s all been done before, and this audiobook pales in comparison. An Atria hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 21).

April 21, 2008
The sassy coauthor of He's Just Not That into You
and former executive story editor for Sex and the City
stays on familiar ground for her energetic fiction debut. It follows the dating lives of five single New York women, one of whom, narrator Julie, is writing a book about how bachelorettes across the world manage. A Yahoo-sponsored trip sent Tuccillo traveling the world interviewing women in preparation for her novel; Julie embarks on a similar journey while her four friends duke it out on the New York dating scene. The subsequent stories of courtship, marriage and romantic expectations from Julie's travels are revealing and compelling, but the narrator's interviews quickly give way to her own international affair. The friends back home engage in familiar behavior: the postdivorce fling, the forbidden workplace romance, the comfortable but boring relationship and the quirky pet as substitute-boyfriend. The women's plucky points-of-view are nicely intermingled, with Julie as the woman who ties them all together in Carrie-like fashion. Occasional shifts to issues like poverty in India, however, work against the book's strengths.