Customer Reviews

Babes in Captivity

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The four Homewood, New Jersey women are best friends living the American dream of raising a family in suburbia. They meet regularly to share their disasters (child or spousal related), but for the most part they seem contented with their lives.

The contented illusion ends when Deirdre informs her cell mates that she hates her nice spouse Paul. She explains to her amused pals, who think Paul is the poster boy for the perfect husband that she wants to restart her singing career with her former Berkley lover. Nick "Mr. Sexy" Ruby who has relocated fifteen miles to the east in New York. Finally she laments that she has had no passionate orgasms since Ruby. Her confessions lead to two of the others moaning their desires. Juliette wants another child, but her husband Cooper hesitates since their son Trey suffers from Asperger's syndrome. Anne wonders if she should leave her philandering spouse filmmaker Damien. Supermom of four, Lisa refuses to reveal to her buddies or her too busy husband Tommy her desire to write a book for fear they will laugh at her "How to Live" tome.

This is an interesting look at family life in suburbia starring four wonderful women, who share fears, disappointments, and dreams with one another that they find difficult to disclose to their spouses. The story line rotates the lead role between the four women using alternating chapters so that fans receive four subplots that tie together through their friendship. BABES IN CAPTIVITY is not a lighthearted chick lit romp, but instead is a fabulously deep character study that compassionately captures the ambivalence and conflict of motherhood and marriage vs. personal dreams.

Harriet Klausner

The cover art for this novel caught my attention when I went browsing for a novel to dive into while on holidays (how could you help but notice this book on the bookstore shelves?!!!), but once I finished reading the first few pages, I was hooked. Pamela Redmond Satran has written a terrific novel that tackles such themes as the ebb and flow of passion in marriage, the importance of chasing after your dreams, and the power of female friendships to sustain women during those times when your life seem to be spiraling out of control. Pamela Redmond Satran has a gift for creating great characters who really help to drive the story forward. It was her characters who kept me reading well into the night when I really should have been sleeping. I simply couldn't put this book down.

After being initially turned off and irritated by at least two of the four main characters in this book, I almost put it down, but I am so glad that I didn't.
Diedra, Lisa, Juliet & Anne are a group of suburban moms who meet for a girls night out once a month to discuss their lives which has led to complaints of discontentment most recently. They make a pact to try to attain a goal each of them has been yearning for in their lives and the book follows them along for a year. Diedra was offensive to me in the beginning but she grew on me throughout the book. Lisa was irritating but likewise redeemed herself. The real jewels were Anne and Juliet and the classy ways they conducted themselves through tense situations. I really enjoyed this book once the initial irritation with the two characters wore off and ended up having a few laughs and a few tears along with them. All in all a very good if not spectacular chick lit read.

Reading this book is like spending time with a group of friends who are smart, funny, and determined to figure out how to get what they want from life. They've been focused on their roles as wives and mothers, but suddenly they reconnect, through their friendship, to something they'd left behind in their "babe" days: desire. Their stories will make you laugh a lot, cry a bit, and will encourage you to think differently about your own life. A great read to share with your book group, mom's group, or your best friend.

I really enjoyed this book. It is light and funny. The characters were easy to envision as my own friends and myself. I would recommend it to others and hope that they enjoy it as much as I did.

The characters in this book seems like real women to me, dealing with real problems. Infertility, divorce, cancer, the wish for a career or the drive for more closeness with children or husbands -- talking about, laughing over, struggling with these issues seems to me to be anything but whining. I really loved this book, was entertained and enlightened by it, and am recommending it to all my friends. The writing is lovely, the scenes vivid and engaging, the message an important one for all women. Read it!

The average chiclit heroine is looking for Mr. Right, worried about whether or not Mr. Right Now could be Mr. Right, or maybe planning her wedding to Mr. Right.

Satran pens chiclit for those of us who have the wedding band and the mortgage and the baby makes three. Her characters may be thirtysomething but they're still babes - quirky, resourceful, memorable. And they assure us that women - wives and mothers - can follow their hearts, their careers, their gut instincts, even when the rest of the world has something else in mind.

This was a quick read & a definite page turner, but like much of my favorite fiction, also an encouraging nod to anyone trying to balance babe-dom with the realities life beyond the big-30.

The four of them are mothers, wives and best friends living the suburban life in Homewood, NJ. Meet Deirdre, Juliette, Anne and Lisa. At the beginning of the story, they all seem content in their lives, but it quickly becomes revealed that dis-satisfaction is lurking in the shadows for each of them, and all for different reasons. Deirdre wants to go back to her singing career, and she wants passion, which she doesn't get with her husband Paul. Juliette wants another baby, but her husband Cooper doesn't seem too thrilled with the idea. Anne discovers her husband is cheating on her, and as much as he is trying to win her back, she isn't so sure that it's what she wants anymore. And Lisa? Well, this perfectionist mother of four is definitely hiding something from everyone. But what?

Join these four women, and their hopes, dreams, disappointments and surprises in "Babes in Captivity". The story explores four women's lives and how they are all tied down in some way to their current lives (hence the title of the book), and what they do to try and removes those binds. This book is not predictable or boring in any way, and it is both tender, hopeful, funny and engaging all at once. It's a solid good read that will be enjoyed by many!

"Babes in Captivity" is Pamela Redmond Satran's second book. I found this novel a very intriguing character study and was drawn into the story pretty quickly, despite having started it while sitting in a busy and crowded room at my car dealer waiting for my car to be fixed. Once you get to know each of the characters, which is a little difficult at first because there are quite a few of them, you'll feel as though these are women you know. Satran does a great job of not only telling a compelling story for each of the characters, but also letting you see into their lives. I thoroughly enjoyed "Babes in Captivity".

I highly recommend this book to all women, especially married women with families, as they will really be able to commiserate with the characters. However, even I as a single and childless woman was able to greatly enjoy this book. This is a bit more of a serious chick lit novel, and not light and fluffy in any way. "Babes in Captivity" is a Downtown Press July release. Don't miss it!

Sorry, girlfriends, but we need to grow up. We're wives and mothers, and no amount of juvenile storytelling is going to turn our lives into fairy tales. I was hoping for a smart, funny look at what our lives (or my life-I'm 36, with 2 girls and a boy in the suburbs) are really like, but this is a lame, unsatisfying fantasy with characters that don't ring true.

I love chick lit and will read books with similar premises simply because they are well-written and entertaining, so when I bought Babes in Captivity, I was expecting something along the lines of "Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons."

I was disappointed.

The story begins with Dierdre, a woman married to a perfect husband and the mother of twins, but what she wants is to renew her old singing career. When her ex-partner and ex-lover moves to NYC, she sees it as the perfect chance to make that change and perhaps hook up with her "true love." Talking about it during a Mom's Dinner with her friends -- Anne, Juliette and Lisa -- the women make a pact to take steps to change their lives so they can get what they really want. This is where the book loses its focus.

Anne and her independent filmmaker husband are always financing his movies, so she is the main breadwinner, but she wants to have her own restaurant. It is unreal why she wants to do this and her announcement of it seems to come from nowhere, as she isn't a chef, but readers are supposed to accept her want as fact.

Juliette is a stay-at-home mom. Her son has asperger's syndrome and her husband is a man more concerned with things than people. At first, her story seems the most real because she wants a second child and her husband is against it.

Lisa is an obessessive-compulsive mother of four who combats an illness during the book. She despises weakness, so she doesn't let anyone know how sick she is until the very end.

Readers are supposed to relate to these women as they go through life's path, but all I could do was shake my head. Dierdre is so spolied, wanting everything but not wanting to work for it. (And Ilove how she can lose all of her extra weight just like that. Juliette goes from one man telling her what to do to a new man taking care of her (of course, this time she's in love so that makes everything OK). Anne has googly eyes over her husband forever, then wises up and sees him for the dirtball he is and managaes to make everything work in her favor in just a few pages. And while Lisa is the character I could feel for the most, I can't imagine any husband letting his wife tell him she's fine after surgery and believing it. If I remember correctly, she doesn't even tell him why she had surgery and he still takes her word for it.

This is a story with a good idea, but it never truly takes off. And the ending is tied up so neatly, it doesn't seem possible -- even for fiction.