Arm Candy

March 8, 2010
She's “as perfect as it gets,” the tabloids blare, but suddenly, Eden, the heroine of Kargman's fun and flashy if not exactly groundbreaking latest, is staring at middle age, a dead-end relationship, and regrets about the one who got away. Still, the biggest downer for the downtown arts-scene beauty is her upcoming 40th birthday. So she does what any tasty piece of arm candy does—finds a rich, charming, 28-year-old hunk of her own. “Don't be afraid to cougar out,” best friend Allison urges. Not everyone is happy with the choice, least of all art-king Otto, who still needs the leggy beauty for his muse. But when young Chase falls hard for Eden, she finds herself thinking more and more about her first, perfect love, Wes. The ending is a foregone conclusion, but Kargman's quick wit and fast-moving story bounce along agreeably, assisted by the amusing quotes that kick off each chapter (“Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician”). Kargman (The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund
) gets it, even if her heroine doesn't.

March 15, 2010
Iconic muse of the New York City art scene contemplates cougardom as 40 looms.

Eden is sure her ethereal beauty will be her ticket out of her backwater hometown. Drawn to Manhattan by the lure of a modeling career, the fetching high-school dropout, after a brief stint as head groupie to a rock star, latches on to Wes, a sensitive, bespectacled architecture student. Soon, however, an older man, Otto, a painter at the top of the art heap, notices 19-year-old Eden and whisks her away to his rarified world of international jetsetters, well-heeled collectors and post-Warhol hedonism. Otto paints Eden in various states of undress, and, overnight, she's a worldwide sensation, beating out Demi Moore for glossy cover space. Otto and Eden cohabit, travel the world and produce a son, but they never marry. Through it all, Eden turns to her trash-talking high-school buddy Allison for moral support. Allison's fluency in the latest argot, and her role as cynical foil to Eden's at times enervating guilelessness, enliven the book, but not often enough. When Otto seduces his latest dewy assistant, Eden storms out, heading uptown, where her looks, still holding at 39, net another conquest: Chase, scion of old-money Upper East Siders, handsome enough to flummox an entire gay bar even if he's only there for Broadway Karaoke. He falls hard for Eden, although she's 12 years older, scandalizing his mother Brooke. His grandmother Ruthie urges Chase to bust out of his noblesse oblige and throw off the yoke of Brooke and his"Hitchcock blonde" girlfriend Liesel, whom Chase has kept hankering after the diamond in Ruthie's vault way too long. When Liesel dumps him, Chase's path to Eden is clear, but a chance encounter reopens Eden's roads not taken, with predictable results.

Despite some witty banter, there is little to distinguish this book, or Eden as a character, from others of the chick-lit genre.

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May 1, 2010
Otto and Eden, a painter and his model muse, have been the art world's hottest couple for two decades. On the brink of Eden's 40th birthday, she catches Otto in bed with another woman; she's always been able to turn a blind eye to it in the past, but at this point in her life, it's too much. She breaks away from Otto and soon starts up an affair of her own with a much younger man. It doesn't help that he comes from one of New York's most elite families, and they don't exactly take kindly to the older, artsy Eden. VERDICT Don't judge this latest by Kargman ("The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund") by the goofy cover and deceptively light titlerich characters, a well-developed love story, and heart help this one rise above the usual frothy fare.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.