13. The Starter Wife

Book 13: The Starter Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer (B+)

I picked up this book because of the popular television mini-series based off the book that Kate and I ate up a few years ago. The show was true to the book being witty, entertaining, and having an air of exaggerated truthfulness. In Hollywood, a wife of an ok studio executive gets a call from her husband saying he wants a divorce. Now, Gracie is an ex-wife, an outcast of the major Hollywood elite society. She loses everything, except the three loyalists of friends - a gay designer, the older cynic married to an even older man for his money, and the paranoid with lots of kids friend. As her ex begins dating Britney Spears, Gracie wonders what will happen to her as her four-year-old daughter starts wearing belly shirt with faux fingernails and herself having no job to speak of. While staying at the older friend's Malibu beach mansion, Gracie finds love in a homeless man, someone so completely not Hollywood that it's the perfect match.

The book reminiscences a bit too much, one of those where the chapters are mostly a collection of Gracie's thoughts instead of actual story. I suppose this is because that most average women, the readers of this book, don't understand what goes into being what is referred to in the book as "A Wife Of" or a Hollywood elite. Still, the constant mental ramblings of Gracie are a bit of an overkill.
I enjoyed that the book, while written in third-person, the perspective changed every so often throughout the book. While we see the world through Gracie's eyes for the majority of the story, there are a few paragraphs and chapters written from the perspective of Sam, Gracie's homeless boyfriend, or Joan, the older cynic. The characters are creative and charismatic with Grazer's insight giving them great depth in the shallow streets of glittery LA. I'd like to read more of her work. 
Definitely a good summer read!