The Housewives

April 15, 2021
Premiering in 2006, Bravo's The Real Housewives of Orange County was a look at the lives of women living in Coto de Caza, a gated community filled with million-dollar homes in sunny Southern California. The show's eight-episode run was a hit that would, in the following decade and a half, spawn nine other series in other cities (New York, Atlanta, Dallas, etc.) and countless spin offs (like Vanderpump Rules). In The Housewives, entertainment journalist and self-proclaimed Real Housewives anthropologist Moylan provides a complete history of the franchise, which thanks to interviews both on and off the record with members of the production team as well as current and former housewives is both painstakingly thorough and incredibly juicy. Though many of Moylan's references and jokes will fly over the heads of everyone but the most devoted Housewives acolytes (on the list of ""Ten Things a Housewife Shouldn't Do"": renew wedding vows), this book's conversational tone and deep look at the history of this cultural phenomenon makes it an easy sell to anyone with even a passing interest in reality television. In the words of former Housewife Bethenny Frankel, Moylan truly "mentions it all."

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