If You Were Here

Humorist Jen Lancaster's breezy, conversational style translates well into the audiobook format in her first work of fiction. Jamie Heinlein is well cast as Mia, the sweetly sarcastic narrator. Mia's success as an author of Amish teen zombie books has given her the means to move to a nicer neighborhood. A lifelong obsession with John Hughes movies leads her to buy "Jake Ryan's house" from the movie SIXTEEN CANDLES--a disaster of a fixer-upper that threatens to undo her career, pocketbook, and marriage. Heinlein responds to each crisis with a light touch and deft comic timing. She resists the temptation to play into Mia's snarky side, keeping her charmingly accessible as she endures a spiral of indignities with pluck and irreverent wit. A.R. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

March 28, 2011
House-proud? For Mia and Mac, it's more like house-crazed after they're forced into a hunt for a better, safer, and more perfect home by a crazed landlady and a firebombing graffiti moron. So begins the laugh-out-loud travails of this smart if hapless Chicago coupleâshe a writer of John Hughesâinspired teenage angst set among the Amish, and he, an impossibly forgiving partner. Lancaster keeps the action fast and funny with a big, rollicking castâMia's grandma Babcia, who runs a Polish cleaning lady syndicate; best friends Tracey and Kara, who share Mia's adoration of all things John Hughes; neighbors from hell; and, of course, Hughes himself, who, when not cited, is spoken to by Mia as she struggles through home renovation, career maintenance, and regular ol' relationship stuff. It helps to know the oeuvre of the prolific Breakfast Club genius, but it's innocence that Lancaster is mostly concerned about in this rambunctiously related (it's footnoted) yarn about finding a home and making it your own.