Customer Reviews

Balancing in High Heels

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

 

 

After "Do Me, Do My Roots," I couldn't wait for this one. What worked for me was that the author wrote great characters I could relate to, and it was hard for me to put down. Also, the author had me rooting for the Butterfly Brigade. What didn't work for me was that I had trouble believing Alissa's anger-management struggle past the first couple of chapters. I know she was put on Prozac, but I needed to feel that drug-induced numbness along with her. Other than that, it was a great read. Plus I liked how each chapter starts with a page from the Anger Management workbook.

When Defense lawyer Alissa Lindley loses her husband to another woman, and her job to a stress-related blowup triggered by the aforementioned (in which a fax machine is the somewhat comical victim), she moves from LA to San Jose to start her life anew. Through her first client, she meets the Butterfly Brigade - a group of women working just outside the law to make the world a better place - and it sets in motion a series of life-altering questions.

Although it's marketed like straight-up romantic chick-lit, Balancing in High Heels is actually more of a lighthearted look at the relationship between anger, frustration, powerlessness and the ability to change, with a little bit of romance and self-discovery along the way. In its pages Rendahl creates a funny and occasionally insightful narrator, who completes an interesting emotional journay, and the book is full of slightly archetypal, but still very relateable secondary characters.

The romance aspect was (in my opinion) a bit underdeveloped - the book bit off a little more than it could chew in terms of achieving that a romantic happy ending - but overall, as a thoughtful book that's fun rather than preachy, Heels will have you sometimes pausing, sometimes nodding, but always laughing and turning pages.

Eileen Rendahl has taken some pretty serious situations; divorce, infidelity, crime, and self-worth, and put a bittersweet twist on them. The situations are sad, but the twist she puts on them has you shaking your head and saying, "been there, done that." Alissa seems like she could be your sister, or your friend. The 'this could be you' feeling of the story brings it close to home, and close to your heart. Can't wait to read the rest of Rendahl's books.

I absolutely loved this book! I swear every other page had me in tears laughing! First book I read by Eileen Rendahl and I couldn't get enough. If you liked this book read "Do me, do my roots", another great book by Ms. Rendahl.

Read this book in just a couple of days at the beach. I enjoyed meeting getting to know the characters of this story and how one bad choice can be the best thing that ever happened to you. Taking chances and standing up for what you want and believe in. I feel like Claire and her family/friends just bonded together so well and the judgements of what something appears to be ended up being the complete opposite! Loved the story and a great read!

greatly enjoyed this book, so much that I bought her book about the sister's that do their roots. I liked this book better than this one because this was lighter and made me laugh more. I still enjoyed the do their roots book, but it also made me cry. a good summer read!

This isn't something I'd normally read, but pretty good overall.

I feel like the author should have run on a little more drama about the ex and the cop. Seemed to be more about the "Butterfly Brigade" than the main character.

Though they were going through a tough period attorney Alissa Lindley is stunned when her husband Thomas informs her he needs her to sign the divorce papers because he must do the right thing by Bethany who is caaying his child. Already frustrated by a non-cooperating fax machine, an irate Alissa tosses the gadget. She is fired and forced to attend an anger management seminar.

Needing to pick up the pieces, Alissa opens her own practice and volunteers to serve as a pro bono public defender in the San Jose area. The clerk of the court assigns her to defend Sheila the stripper head of a vigilante exotic dance troupe avenging the wrongs done to the downtrodden. As Detective E.J. Rodriguez who arrested Sheila investigates other reports of vandalism probably instigated by the avenging dancers, he and Alissa are attracted to one another, but both understand the maxim about sleeping with the enemy.

Alissa and to a lesser degree the support cast seem lost in today's society and struggle to find where they fit; thus the audience receives a focused look at being oneself whatever that might be. The relationship between E.J. and Alissa is well drawn, but also adds to the overall feel of a lost soul seeking satisfaction in a disposable society.

Harriet Klausner