May 15, 2009
Wax ("Single in Suburbia") offers a warm, triumphant tale of female friendship and the lessons learned when life doesn't turn out as planned. At age 45, Kendall Aims is seasoned but shadowed in her writing careercounting on the famed Zelda Award to validate her work and her life. When she fails to win the award, she loses her publishing contract, then goes home to realize that she may lose her marriage. In the midst of all this disappointment, Kendall is told that she's contractually obligated to write one more book. Her friends Mallory, Tanya, and Faye, all writers with varying degrees of personal and professional success, rally together and help her complete the novel. Because they all passionately agreed to make this an anonymous endeavor, they cathartically share secrets they wouldn't have under their actual names. Little do they know that this joint venture will be such a successand such a fiasco. Wax sheds insight on the writer/reader relationship and nurtures this invisible bond throughout. Sure to appeal to fans of women's fiction and aspiring writers.Anne M. Miskewitch, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.