Source: JS Publishing & Media Consulting
Paperback, 432 pgs.
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A Week at the Lake by Wendy Wax is less of a chicklit romance and more of a story about friendship that has been tested when Emma Michaels backs away from her college friends Serena Stockton and Mackenzie Hayes without explanation and again when they agree to meet again for a retreat at Lake George. Emma has been a single mother to Zoe for nearly 15 years, and her parents and siblings from Hollywood’s elite have been kept out of their lives for some time. Although Emma enjoys acting, she takes jobs on her own terms, and she’s tried her best to shelter her own daughter from that fast-paced life. Serena, on the other hand, may be a beautiful starlit that many men drool over, but her work is mainly as the voice of Georgia Goodbody in a cartoon. Mackenzie is the least famous of the three, who moved back to the Midwest with her husband to run a local theater and make costumes when her dreams of motherhood were quickly dashed.
“‘We could put you in the bottom of a canoe and float you out into the lake like a Viking warrior,’ Mackenzie said.
‘As long as nobody tries to set me on fire,’ Emma said.
There was laughter, all of them glad to see any sign of the ‘old’ Emma.” (page 132)
The friendship between these women has been strained, but each of them is excited to head to the lake and reconnect. Serena continues to have a string of shallow affairs with married men, and Emma has focused her attentions on her daughter, Zoe, and her work. MacKenzie has had a relatively quiet and routine life, and her life is the most disrupted by the events that happen to these women. Readers will enjoy getting to know these women, the nuances of their friendships, and the struggles they have in their own lives.
A Week at the Lake by Wendy Wax is a heavier book than most chicklit books, given that these women deal with some significant crises of confidence, emotional baggage, and real-life pain. Wax creates some strong and flawed female characters, and readers will love how these women interact with each other, how friendships can be tested and nearly break, and how they resolve their larger issues. This was another winner, and if you haven’t read Wax’s books, you better get started.
About the Author:
Award-winning author Wendy Wax has written eight novels, including Ocean Beach, Ten Beach Road, Magnolia Wednesdays, the Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist The Accidental Bestseller, Leave It to Cleavage, Single in Suburbia and 7 Days and 7 Nights, which was honored with the Virginia Romance Writers Holt Medallion Award. Her work has sold to publishers in ten countries and to the Rhapsody Book Club, and her novel, Hostile Makeover, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine.
A St. Pete Beach, Florida native, Wendy has lived in Atlanta for fifteen years. A voracious reader, her enjoyment of language and storytelling led her to study journalism at the University of Georgia. She also studied in Italy through Florida State University, is a graduate of the University of South Florida, and worked at WEDU-TV and WDAE-Radio in Tampa.
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