"Goodnight Nobody"

After Nineteen Minutes I went for shameless fluff reading, hold the difficult issues. Jennifer Weiner's Goodnight Nobody fit the bill.

Our heroine is Kate Klein, who has just moved with her husband and three toddlers from New York City, which she loved, to a stultifyingly dull Connecticut suburb. With her sense of humor and (horrors!) interests beyond her home and family, not to mention unruly hair, some extra weight, and clothes that aren't silk, suede, or spotless, she feels totally out of place and is losing hope of making any friends among the sleek, high-heeled, pedicured, flaxseed muffin-baking, Pilates-sculpted Perfect Mommy set.

Things get interesting when one of these perfect mommies invites Kate over for lunch, and upon arrival Kate discovers her body facedown in the kitchen, knifed in the back. Kate latches on to the mystery and with the help of her old friend Janie, she starts finding things out. Needless to say the mommies aren't all that they seem.

It's all highly improbable, but who cares. This novel, like Weiner's others (she also wrote Good in Bed, Little Earthquakes, and In Her Shoes, of which was made the movie w/Cameron Diaz), is totally fun. Earthquakes (about a group of pregnant friends and how their lives change as the babies come) and Nobody are more specific to mothers in their funniness, but they're all a riot. Perfect beach or hammock reading.