The single biggest thing you need to know about this book up front is that it is an unapologetic celebration of materialism and name brands. If you don’t want to read about someone’s Louboutins and how well they match said individual’s Stella McCarthy cocktail dress, then read something else. This book happened to catch me in peak escapist mode so I enjoyed it, and yet in a different frame of mind, I could just as easily have wanted to throw it across the room. My brain is a fickle thing.
Marriage on Madison Avenue is the third book in the Central Park Pact series and it works fine as a stand alone although the characters and themes from the other books are prominently represented. The prologue gets the reader all caught up. It seems that once upon a time a guy named Brayden died, and at his funeral his wife, Claire, met his two girlfriends, Audrey and Naomi. None of the three women had known the other existed, and they made a pact to help each other avoid future jerks. This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Fast forward a year and a half later, and Claire and Naomi have moved on in healthy and happy ways duly detailed in their own novels. However, Audrey continues to feel guilt over (unknowingly) having an affair with a married man. Audrey is an Instagram influencer who is tired of having a reputation as someone who can’t keep a boyfriend (yes, I know, there’s a lot to unpack in that sentence). So Audrey suggests to Clarke West, her best friend from childhood, that they pretend to be engaged for a while just to give her a break from the nasty comments.
Clarke and Audrey embark on a fake engagement which involves an enormous ring and an engagement party (hence the cocktail dress and shoes) and many other examples of conspicuous consumption. Of course, they encounter the inevitable problem with any fake relationship in fiction, which is that they immediately develop FEELINGS but can’t tell each other because they don’t want to ruin the friendship, while Naomi and Claire and their partners and various coworkers and relatives basically do this:
Materialism aside I have to say that this book is very fun, with good dialogue, a focus on friendship, and likeable — if exasperating — characters. The failure of Audrey and Clarke to communicate is frustrating but also, given the high stakes of their eternal friendship, plausible. The book succeeds largely on the fact that they really are good friends, with a nice lived-in relationship makes a good bedrock for a romantic relationship. I also liked that not only are Audrey, Claire, and Naomi friends, but so are their respective partners. The plot doesn’t make much sense, but whenever the friends in any combination are just hanging out being friends, the book shines.
This book earns the B on the strength of friendships but beyond that, there’s just no substance. It’s all frosting and no cake. At the end of the day Audrey and Clarke are rich people with no awareness of their privilege and no particular urge to use their advantages to help others. They each get a small amount of character growth but not a lot. At the beginning they are friends and at the end they are married (I guess that’s a spoiler but it’s a romance so you knew that was coming). Whoopee. I enjoyed it and I forgot it. However, I did love the idea of the pact that forms the series – three women refusing to let a guy make them enemies and instead becoming a family. It’s a medium book and an excellent pact.
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A pass for me, but your review does make me think that in a previous era this book would undoubtedly be classified as an S&F book—as in “shopping & fucking”; although apparently a bit more of the former than the latter.
Lauren Layne is really hit and miss for me. I have books of hers that I love, some I have struggled through, and one or two that I haven’t been able to finish. I think this one lost me at Instagram influencer. It’s also quite a high price point so I may reconsider if it goes on sale in the future.
The older I get, the more I find that the first book (or possibly the first two or three) in a series are great, & then they either start going downhill, or become repetitive.
I just finished reading this one, coincidentally, & I’d have given it a C+, as I really had to push to the end. (I did like the heroine’s summation of the hero’s occupation, though!) I’m not really a shopper type, & I’m old enough that being an influencer is a completely foreign concept to me, so I’m obviously not the target demographic.
I’d recommend at least the first book in this series (Passion on Park Avenue) & determine from that if you’d like to read the other two.
I have such a strong aversion to this type of cover art, but maybe it fits the tone of this book? Bleh.
@Sheri: Same. Looking at my Lauren Layne Kindle collection, it’s a dramatic departure from her Oxford/Stiletto & New York’s Finest covers, so I’m wondering if this was a publisher’s choice & not hers?
I enjoyed the first two books in the series, and will be reading this one as soon as library has it.
On another note, where is that spoiler from-it’s hilarious
I’m with Bronte in that Layne’s been very hit or miss for me. Their work’s always been hyperfocused on rich people doing rich things richly, so I’m not shocked this is the subject of the novel, but bleh. Rich people richly sauntering about in a soapy way is only so much fun.
This isn’t my type of book, but I too want to know about the gif in the spoiler tag – I sort of want to read a book about those two.
Apparently the gif is from an older CW TV show called The Game.
I miss the little hearts, *sob*. I agree with Deianira’s first post: I’m totally not the target demographic and have only a vague idea what an influencer does. I did buy a couple of sales books though.
I always enjoy Lauren Layne’s books, but she’s just so wrong about NYC. Kind of like Castle (the NBC show).
@Ms M: I would love a Rec League about authors who get settings right and wrong! I always appreciate know the place they are setting books at and it takes me out of the story when they don’t (Hey, the mountains are the west side! You can’t get from point A to B in 10 minutes!)
As others have said Layne is hit or miss for me too. I *loathed* the first one in this series, Naomi’s book and that was the one I was expecting to enjoy (why didn’t he recognize her? And he was such a jerk to her sorry, digress..). I liked Bianca’s story as she got over her cheating husband. My feelings for this was pretty much in line with this review. I didn’t hate it like the first but there wasn’t a story like the second.