Best Staged Plans [Hardcover]

Claire Cook (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 7, 2011

As a professional home stager, Sandy Sullivan is an expert at transforming cluttered rooms into attractive houses ready for sale. If only reinventing her life were as easy as choosing the perfect paint color. She's eager to put her family's suburban Boston home on the market, to downsize, and to simplify her own life. But she must first deal with her foot-dragging husband and her grown son, who has moved back home after college to inhabit the basement "bat cave."

After reading them the riot act, Sandy takes a job staging a boutique hotel in Atlanta recently acquired by her best friend's boyfriend. The good news is that she can spend time with her recently married daughter, Shannon, in Atlanta. The bad news is that Shannon finds herself heading to Boston for job training, leaving Sandy and her southern son-in-law, Chance, as reluctant roommates. If that's not complicated enough, Sandy begins to suspect that her best friend's boyfriend may be seeing another woman on the side.

Filled with characters who are fresh and original, yet recognizable enough to live in your neighborhood--plus plenty of great tips and tricks for fixing up houses, and lives--this is a wise and witty story of letting go and moving on. Best Staged Plans is Claire Cook at her most humorous and heartfelt.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Claire Cook is the best-selling author of the novels The Wildwater Walking Club, Summer Blowout, Life's A Beach, Must Love Dogs, Ready to Fall, and Multiple Choice. Formerly a teacher of physical fitness and creative writing, she has also had stints as a copywriter, radio continuity director, garden designer, dance and aerobics choreographer. She lives in Scituate, Massachusetts, often called the Irish Riviera, with her family.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Voice; First Edition edition (June 7, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401341179
• ISBN-13: 978-1401341176
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #556,567 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

After a lifetime of fear and procrastination and sixteen years as a teacher, I wrote my first novel in my minivan at 45. At 50, I walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the adaptation of my second novel, MUST LOVE DOGS. I'm now the bestselling author of nine novels, including WALLFLOWER IN BLOOM, with a tenth, TIME FLIES, coming from Touchstone in June. Midlife rocks!

Visit ClaireCook.com, where you can stay in the loop for fun giveaways, read excerpts of all my novels and find book club questions. And make sure you check out my writing and reinvention pages, where I share everything I've learned so far.

Come hang out with me on my Facebook author page, too: Facebook.com/ClaireCookauthorpage.

And follow me at Twitter.com/ClaireCookwrite and Pinterest.com/ClaireCookwrite. I'll follow you back!

I've been a judge for the Family Circle magazine fiction contest, a finalist and a judge for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Beach Read Festival fiction and grand prize winner. I've spoken at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, Cape Cod Writers Center, the California Women's Conference, and given keynotes at the Dress for Success International Conference, the Missouri Writers Guild Conference, and the Amelia Island Book Festival.

"The exuberant and charming Claire Cook is one of the sassiest and funniest creators of contemporary women's fiction," according to The Times-Picayune. People Magazine says her writing "goes down as easy as it sounds," Good Housekeeping calls it "laugh-out-loud," Redbook "gleefully quirky" and the Chicago Tribune "funny and pitch perfect." The Today Show featured Claire as a "Today's Woman."

I was born in Virginia, and lived for many years in Scituate, Massachusetts, a beach town between Boston and Cape Cod. My husband and I have recently moved to the suburbs of Atlanta to be closer to family. Check out the events page at ClaireCook.com to see when I'll be coming to an event near you - I'd love to meet you!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't leave home without your...readers June 24, 2011

By Clara F. Strom

Format:Hardcover

Just when you think you are reading another chic lit novel Claire Cook throws in a few life lessons and then she makes you laugh out loud. Female "boomers" might recognize Sandy Sullivan's life. She has set the stage perfectly. Sandy is a successful business woman she has been there, done that, but is left wondering, now what? She realizes she is "in one of the free-pass stages of life. Parents and pets dead and buried, the children are flying mostly on their own...", but isn't counting her blessings until she meets a homeless woman who stops her in her tracks. This is a great summer beach read, but be prepared because Claire Cook will challenge you to take a good hard look at your life, with or without the reading glasses.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My own plans June 26, 2011

By Kim W.

Format:Kindle Edition

Well, this book had me from the first chapter. I found it so easy to relate to the main character; I could see myself in her shoes from the beginning, wondering what the next stages of my life were going to be and where they would take me! I really enjoyed the flow of this book, too, and would find myself surprised that I had blasted through the pages so quickly! What was most interesting is the story of Sandy motivated me to start making plans of my own and actually follow through with them! I highly recommend you take Best Staged Plans to the beach with you this summer (or wherever it is you go!)!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun & spot-on, with more substance than first meets the eye June 29, 2011

By A. D. Cox VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Over a decade ago, authors like Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones' Diary), Candace Bushnell (Sex and the City), and Jennifer Weiner (In Her Shoes), forged a new sub-genre known - sometimes derogatorily - as "chick lit", which offers well-written, sympathetic, fun characters to female readers. These authors paved the way for more books featuring stories predominantly about the lives of contemporary women, written for women who like to read about people who sound like themselves and their friends. Nevertheless, more often than not, most of these books focus on women in their twenties and thirties, struggling with dating, work, a social life (usually in the city), and early marriage. The Baby Boomer women and their younger siblings, while they may find these books amusing, still have slim pickings when looking for fun "chick lit" about chicks dealing with retirement, aging parents, adult children moving home, empty nesting, and their own aging.

Enter author Claire Cook. At first, I thought "Best Staged Plans" looked like just another cute chick lit book. I was pleased to find not only a new kind of "chick lit" - one I can recommend to my mom and her friends, but one I enjoyed as well. Sandy Sullivan is ready to move to the next stage of life with her husband: they'd dreamed of selling the big New England house that they restored while raising their children, and moving to a fun beach condo. Though she continues doing some business as a home-stager for other people selling their houses, on her own homefront, Sandy's dream of downsizing is thwarted by the heel-dragging of her adult son who moves back home to inhabit their basement, and her retired husband who is too busy playing tennis and going jogging to help with home repairs.

Frustrated by their lack of cooperation, Sandy decides to fly to Atlanta to help her best friend's boyfriend redecorate a newly acquired boutique hotel. Since Sandy's newly-married daughter lives in Atlanta, she plans on having some great girl-time with her daughter, earning some money and professional satisfaction, helping out her best friend, and showing the men of her family her displeasure, but the best-made plans .... Though self-confessed control-freak Sandy is flustered and anxious with the turn of events in Atlanta, in meeting a homeless woman who sleeps under the hotel's dumpster, Sandy soon finds out that there are much worse life changes than being left alone with an overly-polite son-in-law or dealing with her best friend's probable cheating boyfriend. Though Best Staged Plans starts out with characters who seemed a little shallow to me, Cook uses this to pave the way for a gentle but satisfying life lesson to be grateful for what we have.