Hello, Sunshine

June 5, 2017
After focusing on wine in her previous novel, Eight Hundred Grapes, Dave’s new novel centers on food, following a disgraced YouTube chef forced to confront her (in)authentic self. On her 35th birthday, Sunshine Mackenzie wakes up on top of the world: she has a successful online cooking show and several cookbooks to her name, not to mention a lucrative Food Network contract. But when a hacker reveals on Twitter that Sunshine’s entire public persona—from her culinary chops to her picture-perfect marriage to her down-home upbringing—is a fraud, she quickly discovers just how fragile and fleeting success can be. Fleeing scandal by retreating to Montauk and her estranged sister’s strained good graces, Sunshine desperately casts about for a new beginning; soon enough, however, she realizes that starting over isn’t easy when you no longer have any idea who you really are. In Sunshine, Dave reveals her skill at crafting deeply flawed yet sympathetic characters and avoids easy resolutions in favor of realizations hard won by the heroine. The settings—both the glamorous Manhattan and Hamptons environs and the restaurant-kitchen intrigues—are engaging, but ultimately Sunshine’s journey to define herself apart from her Instagram filters and YouTube followers is where the novel shines. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment.

Narrator Joy Osmanski portrays the fictional social media darling Sunshine Mackenzie, a lifestyle guru who specializes in cooking. Osmanski captures Sunny's shock and anger when she finds her online world collapsing due to a nasty hack on her thirty-fifth birthday. Osmanski's snarky voice suggests a not-very-attractive Sunny who is focused on whom to blame and on getting her virtual life back. When she returns to her hometown of Montauk, Long Island, where her estranged sister lives, Sunny slowly finds her way back to an authentic life. With careful pacing, Osmanski credibly shifts her delivery as Sunny moves from self-pity to self-awareness and self-acceptance. Osmanski makes this send-up of social media celebrity totally believable. N.E.M. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine