Magnolia Wednesdays [Mass Market Paperback]

Wendy Wax (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2010

From the author of The Accidental Bestseller comes a wonderfully entertaining book about what to do when life comes at you full swing.

At forty-one, Vivian Armstrong Gray's life as an investigative journalist is crumbling. Humiliated after taking a bullet in her backside during an exposé, Vivi learns that she's pregnant, jobless, and very hormonal. This explains why she says 'yes' to a dreadful job covering suburban living back home in Georgia, a column she must write incognito.

Down South, it's her sister's ballroom dance studio that becomes her undercover spot where she learns about the local life-and where unexpected friendships develop. As she digs up her long buried roots, she starts to wonder if life inside the picket fence is really so bad after all.

Read Wendy Wax's post on the Penguin Blog.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Life in Atlanta's suburbs becomes a hot topic for a mom-to-be who knows more about news than diapers in Wax's bittersweet potboiler. After investigative TV reporter Vivien Armstrong Gray gets shot in the butt while chasing a story, she becomes an overnight sensation, but that doesn't keep the newsroom from adding attractive new talent to her department. Seeing the writing on the wall, Vivien quits, but soon learns that finding a job isn't so easy for a newly pregnant 41-year old. She relocates to suburban Atlanta and lands a column writing about suburbia from an outsider perspective. She finds plenty of fodder in her family, but her questions about the death of her sister's husband may have serious consequences. Vivien's an easy protagonist to love; she's plucky, resourceful, and witty—the perfect outsider's guide to the SUV and bake sale zoo. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Vivien Armstrong Gray spent years working her way up the ladder to become one of the top investigative reporters in the business, and it only takes a split second to have it fall apart: while working on an exposé, Vivien is shot in the rear end, and the video ends up on YouTube. In quick succession she is not only humiliated but also jobless and pregnant at 41, while the baby’s father is embedded as a reporter in Afghanistan. With few choices left, she returns home to Georgia to wait out her pregnancy and write scathing articles ridiculing suburbia under a pseudonym for a magazine in New York. While following her sister and her niece and nephew around, observing life, Vivien finds plenty of fodder for her articles. But as time passes, Vivien realizes she’s become deeply entrenched in people’s lives, so the articles become harder to write. An honest, realistic story of family, love, and priorities with genuine characters. --Hilary Hatton

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade; 1 edition (March 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425232352
• ISBN-13: 978-0425232354
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #521,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, Wendy read voraciously as a child, was a regular at her local library, and became fast friends with Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables. Her love affairs with language and storytelling paid off beginning with her first shift at the campus radio station while studying journalism at the University of Georgia.

After returning to her home state and graduating from the University of South Florida she worked for the Tampa PBS affiliate, WEDU-TV, behind and in front of the camera. Her resume includes on air work, voiceovers and production of a variety of commercial projects and several feature films. She may be best known in the Tampa Bay area as the host of Desperate & Dateless, a radio matchmaking program that aired on WDAE radio, and nationally as host of The Home Front, a magazine format show that aired on PBS affiliates across the country.

The mother of a toddler and an infant when she decided to change careers, she admits it was not the best timing in terms of productivity. "I'm still not certain why I felt so compelled to write my first novel at that particular time," she says, "but that first book took forever." Since then she's written seven more, including MAGNOLIA WEDNESDAYS, The Accidental Bestseller and Single in Suburbia. Her work has been sold to publishers in ten countries and to the Rhapsody Book Club. Her novel, Hostile Makeover, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine.

Wendy lives in the Atlanta suburbs with her husband John and her baseball-crazy teenage sons, whom she says have turned her into the shortest person in their family. A former broadcaster, she spends most of her non-writing time on baseball fields or driving to them. She continues to devour books.

For more information, visit her website at www.authorwendywax.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WHAT'S A NICE SOUTHERN GIRL TO DO?, April 11, 2010

By 

Laurel-Rain Snow "Rain" "Rainy Days" (Fresno, California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Magnolia Wednesdays (Mass Market Paperback)

Wendy Wax has magically turned Magnolia Wednesdays into one of those homey, cozy, and totally intriguing peeks into the Southern way of life. For a woman who thought she'd totally escaped that world, Vivien Armstrong Gray finds herself suddenly catapulted back there when she is shot in the derriere while investigating a story. When the video ends up on You-Tube, and her employers think she needs to take a step back and they bring in an "understudy" for her to train, she quits.

Huffily, she takes off for her home in Atlanta, where she moves in with her sister Melanie and prepares to follow her around in suburbia. But first, in the process of quitting, she has taken on a free-lance assignment to write Postcards from Suburbia for her NY newspaper.

On the way out of NY, though, she visits her doctor to follow up on the "wound," and discovers something else unexpected...she is pregnant. Her boyfriend is on assignment in various spots around the world, and she decides not to tell him...not for awhile, anyway.

What does Vivi discover while exploring this "strange land of suburbia"? What happens along the way to totally change her view of almost everything? And in the end, will she finally find her own happiness?

This could have been one of those predictable chick-lit stories, but Wendy Wax has a way of turning a phrase and pulling the reader in. She writes with humor, depth, and insight, which earned five stars from me.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Average..., August 5, 2011

By 

Tonya Speelman "Hoarder of books" (Goldendale WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Magnolia Wednesdays (Mass Market Paperback)

Cute, typical but a good fluff read. Vivi is an independent woman who lives an edgy lifestyle as a journalist. She fancies herself a wonderful writer and a single independent woman. However the bottom drops out of her life when she is replaced by someone younger, shot in the buttocks and surprise surprise she is pregnant.

So she heads home, as we all do when the going gets rough. She doesn't tell anyone in her family she is pregnant or she is writing this article anon. about surburbia and the crazy people in it.

Then she thinks there is something fishy about her brother-in-law's "accidental" death and investigates secretly. However, we must all remember our secrets catch up with us and they might hurt more than help.

Also, Vivi's boyfriend Stone is a reporter as well and is overseas at the time so Vivi doesn't tell him she is pregnant with their baby, so how will it all end?

I am sure you can guess, which takes some of the fun out of it. A few surprises mixed in, but generally a story you can breeze through and doesn't really take your breath away...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Magnolia Wednesdays Review, April 7, 2011

By 

amw1144 "amw1144" (Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Magnolia Wednesdays (Paperback)

This book was an even read about an investigative reporter whose life changes quickly when she finds she is pregnant after being shot while trying to capture a story. I loved the characters, the life lessons and the way Wax can describe suburban living like she was describing a foreign country. She also takes her time so this is not a great book for the impatient. While this is not my favorite of Wax's books, I'm looking forward to more from her.