My review of The Starter Wife, a truly terrible trashy novel from 2005

 

 

Spoilers in this review

About halfway through my thrift shop purchase of The Starter Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer I realized I had read it before -- unless there were two novels where the ex-husband dates Britney Spears.  I recalled that even when I first read the novel around the time it came out in 2005 I thought that it was utterly in poor taste to bring Britney -- who by that time was clearly and publicly very troubled -- into this.

Nothing else about the book was familiar as I re-read it.  Not the confusion I felt in the opening chapter about whether I was supposed to like the main character, Gracie, or if she was an anti-hero.  In the first half of the chapter she's at a party, unhappy because the women she's hanging out with there are judging other people by their looks.  In the second half she has an internal monologue devoted to . . . judging other people by their looks.

Gracie continues to be an enigma wrapped up in an idiot.  She is at the end of a marriage that had no reason to start, except that her husband was rich and once bought her a nice meal.  Throughout the book she has nothing kind to say about him, no indication that she ever had any real feelings for him, no mention that the relationship added anything to her life except for a daughter who spends most of the book napping.

 Of course Gracie has a gay bff.  And a couple of other friends with no discernible characteristics.  One has kids and one drinks.  Or are they the same person?  

And then . . . enter the well-groomed, healthy, kind, smart, handsome homeless person with no substance abuse or mental health issues.  (Spoiler: he's also super rich.)  They have one night of sex and then move in together.  The end.  

Sigh.