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Summary
Summary
How do you change your luck? A young woman chooses to look for happiness in this marvelously entertaining and poignant novel from the New York Times bestselling author of How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire .
"A hilarious and touching take on what it means to be a grown-up."--Julie Buxbaum, author of Admission and Tell Me Three Things
Sarah Harper isn't sure if the stupid decisions she sometimes makes are good choices in disguise--or if they're really just stupid. But either way, after forwarding an inappropriate email to her entire company, she suddenly finds herself out of a job.
So she goes home to Houston--and her sister, Mackie--for Thanksgiving. But before Sarah can share her troubles with her sister, she learns that Mackie has some woes of her own: After years of trying, Mackie's given up on having a baby--and plans to sell on eBay the entire nursery she's set up. Which gives Sarah a brilliant idea--an idea that could fix everyone's problems. An idea that gives Sarah the chance to take care of her big sister for once--instead of the other way around.
But nothing worthwhile is ever easy. After a decade away, Sarah is forced to confront one ghost from her past after another: the father she's lost touch with, the memories of her mother, the sweet guy she dumped horribly in high school. Soon everything that matters is on the line--and Sarah can only hope that by changing her life she has changed her luck, too.
Author Notes
Katherine Center is a New York Times bestselling author. She started wrting in elementary school with her focus being on poems, essays, and stories. She won a creative writing scholarship in high school, and then went on to major in creative writing at Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize. At 22, she won a fellowship to the University of Houston¿s Creative Writing Program and moved home to Texas. She struggled for a decade with her writing before she wrote her first novel, The Bright Side of Disaster, which hit the bestseller lists.
Katherine's writing reflects her belief that joy is as important as sorrow. Her stories are all about finding ways to savor life's moments of grace. Her other title's include: How to Walk Away, Husband, and Happiness for Beginners. Her work has appeared in People, USA Today, Vanity Fair and Redbook.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her light third novel, Center (Everyone Is Beautiful) tackles sisterhood, but falls just short of poignancy. Sarah Harper is on the New York fast track at a top advertising agency until she grows a conscience overnight and sends out a companywide e-mail debunking her popular bra campaign. Fired, she flies home to Houston, where she crashes with her older sister, Mackie, and Mackie's husband, Clive. Turns out Mackie has problems of her own: after years of trying to have a baby, she announces she's done. In an effort to do something good for a change, Sarah offers herself up as a surrogate. In the nine pregnant months that follow, Sarah juggles unexpected feelings for her brother-in-law and expected feelings for an ex-boyfriend, and instead of the pregnancy bringing her and Mackie closer, it drives them apart. Witty dialogue and likable characters keep the pages turning, but Center glosses over the depth of emotion inherent in carrying your sister's baby to the point that you forget at times that Sarah is pregnant. It's a fun, breezy book, but it doesn't try to get to the heart of the matter. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Sometimes the worst thing to happen turns out to be the best and vice versa. Sarah Harper does the unthinkable and forwards an inappropriate e-mail to the entire company, losing her job in advertising. Luckily she planned to go home to Houston to spend time with her sister Mackie and her husband. Unfortunately, on the plane, she sits next to Everett, the high-school boyfriend she unceremoniously dumped. After Sarah realizes how gorgeous and successful he is, Everett ruins the moment by making a snarky comment. Capriciousness takes over Sarah's life as she decides to help Mackie with her infertility problem by becoming a surrogate. Sarah perceives this as a bonding time for the sisters, but things do not work out as planned, and Sarah finally recognizes that the loss of her mother at a young age had major effects on her life, her attitude toward love, and maybe even her luck. Center delivers an original, engaging, and touching novel populated with quirky and lovable characters, and ripe for discovery by readers looking for a cheering read.--Engelmann, Patty Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
After accidentally forwarding a filthy email to her entire company, Sarah is fired from her New York advertising job. During a visit to her dear sister Mackie back home in Houston, the reality of Mackie's years of unsuccessful pregnancies gives Sarah an idea-she can have a baby for Mackie! But then what Sarah thought would be a simple, loving deed gets incredibly complicated. Pregnancy hormones raging, Sarah develops a crush on Clive, her brother-in-law. Then her old boyfriend Everett reappears, and Sarah can't decode his feelings for her. And when her father announces his marriage to Dixie, a bedazzled cowgirl who couldn't be more different from the girls' late mother, emotions run high. Once Sarah gives birth, the sisters' relationship becomes strained, and Sarah needs to work out her feelings about Everett and returning to Manhattan vs. staying in Houston. Verdict Center (Everyone Is Beautiful: The Bright Side of Disaster) has written another thoroughly enjoyable girlish romp. The story is cute, the characters are likable, and there's enough depth to keep the reader from being covered in fluff.-Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One First: I got fired. For emailing a website with hundreds of pictures of breasts to every single person in our company. Even the CEO and chairman of the board. Even the summer interns. Looking back, I may have been ready to leave my job. I'd like to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes the crazy things I do are actually very sensible. And sometimes, of course, they're just crazy. I knew the company had just lost a high-profile sexual harassment lawsuit for some very big money. I knew we were now enforcing our zero- tolerance policy. I knew somebody somewhere in the chain of command was looking to make an example. But I didn't think about all that at the time. Here's another thing I didn't think about: I'd just nailed the ad campaign of a lifetime, and I was finally about to get promoted. In my defense, it wasn't like these people had never seen a breast before. In fact, our whole agency had been awash in them for months. We'd just finished a national campaign for a major bra company, and I'd led the creative team. I'd even come up with the concept-ads directing women to do all sorts of crazy things with their chests while wearing one of these bras. "Dip 'em," one ad read, while our push-up-clad model leaned into a swimming pool, dunking her boobs in the water. "Scoop 'em," read another, while she pushed her boobs up toward her chin with two enormous ice cream cones. "Lauch 'em," ordered a third, as she arched her back up to the sky. And on and on: "Smack 'em," "Mug 'em," "Wash 'em," "Flush 'em," "Flash 'em," "Love 'em," "Lick 'em," "Leave 'em." I'd spent innumerable hours with those boobs-weekends, nights-working my butt off to turn them into the most famous cleavage in America. Which, by January, they'd become. No small feat. The model for the campaign was nineteen years old and profoundly anorexic with the most enormous augmented chest you can imagine. I didn't even know her name, actually. We just called her "the Tits." She was a petulant teen who spent all her time between shots wearing earbuds and drinking lattes and then asking people for gum. The question "Do you have any gum?" will forever take me back to that summer. She was a pretty girl, though the freckles, bumpy nose, and squinty eyes would have required retouching. If we'd used her face. In the end, we zoomed in so close that her face didn't even come into the shots. When it came to bras, who needed a face? That's really how I used to think. I'm not exaggerating at all. If I sound crass here, that's because I was. If I sound unlikable, that's probably true, too. I was, at this point in my life, after six years in advertising, a person who needed a serious spanking from the universe. And don't worry. I was about to get it. I was proud of the ads. They were saturated with color, eye-catching, naughty, and delightful. Everybody was ecstatic, and I was strutting around the office like a diva. The Boob Diva. That was me. But something was off. Being the Boob Diva wasn't as great as I'd expected. I'd been so underappreciated at that job for so long that when appreciation finally came, it felt false. Maybe I'd built up too many expectations. Maybe all the pep talks I'd given myself about my coworkers being idiots were finally kicking in. Or maybe external validation is always a little disappointing, no matter what. The books I'd been reading weren't helping, either. I had a whole stack by my bed that chronicled the ways advertising was making us all miserable. Who knows why I kept buying them? It's a chicken-egg question. Did I hate my job because I was reading the books? Or was I reading the books because I hated my job? Either way, I couldn't get around what they had to say: That an economy based on buying stuff needed to keep us all dissatisfied and miserable, needed to keep us focused on what we didn't have instead of what we did, and needed to Excerpted from Get Lucky by Katherine Center All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
