Secrets to Happiness

January 5, 2009
Dunn charts several New Yorkers’ lives in this snappy novel. The spotlight most often falls on Holly Frick, a 35-year-old divorcée whose egg walls “are taking on the consistency of tissue paper as we speak.” A writer whose cheeky first novel bombed, Holly now resides low enough on the TV totem pole to be cranking out after-school dreck with her gay pal Leonard. Meanwhile, her best friend, Amanda, is cheating on her husband, and Holly adopts Chester, a cute little dog with cancer whose hopeful approach to life mirrors Holly’s. While Holly’s love life follows a formula-familiar trajectory, Amanda’s romantic flailing ensnares Holly, and Chester’s destiny takes an unexpected turn that means big changes for both of them. Although clichés pop up (the supergay friend, a $1,200 purse splurge), the energetic and witty prose speeds along the narrative. It’s smarter than the usual single-in-the-city fare, and funnier, too.

January 1, 2009
A newly divorced scriptwriter 's search for happiness involves lovers old and new and an adopted dog with a brain tumor.

Sharp-witted Dunn follows her debut (The Big Love, 2004) with a predictably formatted tale simultaneously elevated by its snappy humor and tinged by some reflective shading. Although the story 's principal focus is Holly —35 and only one year out of her marriage to an unfaithful spouse —it also includes the perspectives of several friends and colleagues, each trying to find fulfillment and dodge failure. Best friend Amanda, although seemingly happy in her marriage, has started an affair; Holly 's gay writing partner Leonard is living beyond his means while his career slides into oblivion; Betsy, sister to Holly 's young lover Lucas, is beginning to feel desperate about her stalled job and dismal love life; and promiscuous Spence, one of Holly 's earlier ex-lovers, is starting to find his cheating, one-night stands and dull dates unsatisfactory. Neurotic and New York-y, these characters exchange oddly similar banter while contemplating their individual life paths and beliefs, before embarking on different, possibly more gratifying chapters. Holly 's progress includes nursing the dog with cancer back to health, meeting a possible Mr. Right, losing him again, losing the dog too, but finding new and hopeful next versions of both.

Deft repartee and happy endings all around don 't entirely erase the underlying bleakness in this smart chick-lit tale with dark undertones.

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

February 15, 2009
Like Dunn's heroine in her debut, "The Big Love", Holly Frick is brokenhearted and looking for happiness against the backdrop of hectic New York City. Holly believes in doing the right thing. Whether it's a result of her evangelical Christian upbringing or just a generally overactive conscience, the "right thing" includes adopting a dog with a brain tumor and meeting her married friend's paramour because her friend thinks they'll like each other. The assorted cast of supporting characters includes a 22-year-old lover, a skinny girl who finally agrees to date the overweight guy from her gym, and a gay man who has an unhealthy relationship with his attention deficit disorder meds. These characters circle around Holly in an exploration of six degrees of separation as she touches each of themand they herin their quests for happiness. Readers of Dunn's previous novel and fans of Jennifer Weiner and Jane Green will enjoy the sophisticated tone of this classic searching-for-love story. Recommended for popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/15/08.]Anika Fajardo, Coll. of St. Catherine Lib., St. Paul

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2009
Holly Frick is smart and sassy, loyal and dedicated. All the qualities a woman could want in a girlfriend, but not the ones that seem to resonate with men, if her roster of failed relationships is any indicator. Theres her ex-husband, Alex, with whom shes still in love; her ex-boyfriend, Spence, a womanizing creep whom Holly scathingly immortalized in her first novel; and Lucas, a 22-year-old boy-toy who, for all his playful sexuality, ultimately makes Holly feel like a cradle-robbing matron. But then she meets Jack, an opinionated Buddhist who is having an affair with her married best friend; and even though Holly takes an immediate dislike to him, she has to admit theres something undeniable lurking just beneath the surface. Dunn displays a rapier wit; a perfectly nuanced gift for savvy, sophisticated dialogue; and an endearing moral compass, which she uses to great advantage as she blithely navigates the fraught and fatuous world of trendy New Yorks treacherous dating scene.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)