goodnight nobody

goodnight nobody
jennifer weiner
contemporary fiction/chick lit/mystery
atria
published 2005

For Kate Klein, a semi-accidental mother of three, suburbia has been full of unpleasant surprises.  Her once-loving husband is hardly ever home.  The supermommies on the playground routinely snub her.  Her days are spent carpooling and enduring endless games of Candy Land, and at night, most of her orgasms are of the do-it-yourself variety.

When a fellow mother is murdered, Kate finds that the unsolved mystery is the most exciting thing to happen in Upchurch, Connecticut, since her neighbors broke ground for a guesthouse and cracked their septic tank.  Even though the local police chief warns her that crime-fighting's a job best left to the professionals, Kate launches an unofficial investigation - from 8:45 to 11:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when her kids are in nursery school.

As Kate is drawn deeper into the murdered woman's past, she begins to uncover the secrets and lies behind Upchurch's picket-fence facade - and considers the choices and compromises all modern women make as they navigate between obligation and independence, small towns and big cities, being a mother and having a life of one's own.

A murder mystery.  Quite a departure from her usual fare and it shows.  There's still the complicated mother/daughter relationship, feelings of inadequacies, the slightly overweight female character, the good looking and fearless best friend...but there was something missing.  The like-ability of the main character maybe?  Even now, having just finished the book 5 minutes ago I couldn't remember the name of the main character!

Kate.  She wasn't believable, she wasn't fully fleshed out.  She lost her mind over this man she never had a relationship with and married the first man who came along after.  Then she complains about being dissatisfied.  She goes off half cocked every time she gets just a tiny idea of something and it's wrong.  Every. Time.

But what more than that, I never felt like she loved her kids or her husband.  Or even Evan, the one that got away.  She just wanted to do whatever she wanted to do and damn all to everyone else.

Alone, it's not a horrible book, but compared to In Her Shoes or Good in Bed this was entirely lackluster.