At the end of September, faced with a mountain of books I had not read in almost a decade, I decided to start sorting through my books and reread any of those that I was unsure of keeping. I originally created this list of ten books with the goal of reading them before the end of the year. At the moment I have so far read three books from the list and have written one review for Pearl Cove. My progress was halted slightly over the past couple of weeks by school work, actual work and the lack of motivation to write more reviews. I did not want to get too ahead of myself with reading and then forget to write my reviews of the books so I made myself wait a bit before starting the fourth book. That being said, the second book I read was “An Inconvenient Woman” by Dominick Dunne and it is quite frankly one of my favorite guilty pleasure books to read.
“An Inconvenient Woman” is the tale of the waitress turned mistress Flo March and it is excellently written. This tale is full of surprises and twists and the end is not what you think it will be but I will not give anything away. Flo starts out with humble beginnings and ends up being the mistress of a very powerful man, Jules Mendelson. The book goes back and forth between Jules and Flo telling their story which is a great way to get perspective on each character. Philip, a writer from New York, is also prominently featured as an outside view into the closed off life of Jules, and later Flo. There are several murders, fancy parties, love triangles, spies, mobsters, health crisis and of course, the romance of Jules and Flo.
All of it is well written and I really don’t want to give too much away but this book is about old money, how old money power is used, Hollywood ideals, romance, action and adventure. There is some talk about the finer things in life but only to show the character’s station in life and to add to the story background.
I like to keep these reviews short but I will definitely be keeping this book. At some point I may need to replace my copy but so far it is going strong! Our next review will be for “The Beach House” by James Patterson if you would like to read ahead before my review posts next week.
Side note: I just read the publishing date on this book and it is 1990 which means I was not old enough to read it when it came out. I highly suspect I appropriated this book off of my mom’s book shelf at some point. It is the kind of book her friends would read, lend to her, and she would politely file on her bookshelf to gather dust. I am sure there are used copies out there somewhere!
Verdict: Keep this book!
Links:
An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne
“The Beach House” by James Patterson
