Secrets to Happiness: A Novel [Hardcover]

Sarah Dunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 2009

Holly Frick has just endured the worst kind of breakup: the kind where you're still in love with the person leaving you. While her wounds are still dangerously close to the surface, her happily married best friend confesses over a bottle of wine that she is this close to having an affair. And another woman comes to Holly for advice about her love life--with Holly's ex!

Holly decides that if everyone around her can take pleasure wherever they find it, so will she. As any self-respecting 30ish New York woman would do, she brings two males into her life: a flawed but endearing dog, and a good natured, much younger lover. She's soon entangled in a web of emails, chance meetings, and misguided good intentions and must forge an entirely new path to Nirvana.

From the author of The Big Love, Secrets to Happiness is a big-hearted, knife-sharp, and hilariously entertaining story about the perils of love and friendship, sex and betrayal--and a thoroughly modern take on our struggle to be happy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dunn charts several New Yorkers' lives in this snappy novel. The spotlight most often falls on Holly Frick, a 35-year-old divorcée whose egg walls are taking on the consistency of tissue paper as we speak. A writer whose cheeky first novel bombed, Holly now resides low enough on the TV totem pole to be cranking out after-school dreck with her gay pal Leonard. Meanwhile, her best friend, Amanda, is cheating on her husband, and Holly adopts Chester, a cute little dog with cancer whose hopeful approach to life mirrors Holly's. While Holly's love life follows a formula-familiar trajectory, Amanda's romantic flailing ensnares Holly, and Chester's destiny takes an unexpected turn that means big changes for both of them. Although clichés pop up (the supergay friend, a $1,200 purse splurge), the energetic and witty prose speeds along the narrative. It's smarter than the usual single-in-the-city fare, and funnier, too. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Holly Frick is smart and sassy, loyal and dedicated. All the qualities a woman could want in a girlfriend, but not the ones that seem to resonate with men, if her roster of failed relationships is any indicator. There’s her ex-husband, Alex, with whom she’s still in love; her ex-boyfriend, Spence, a womanizing creep whom Holly scathingly immortalized in her first novel; and Lucas, a 22-year-old boy-toy who, for all his playful sexuality, ultimately makes Holly feel like a cradle-robbing matron. But then she meets Jack, an opinionated Buddhist who is having an affair with her married best friend; and even though Holly takes an immediate dislike to him, she has to admit there’s something undeniable lurking just beneath the surface. Dunn displays a rapier wit; a perfectly nuanced gift for savvy, sophisticated dialogue; and an endearing moral compass, which she uses to great advantage as she blithely navigates the fraught and fatuous world of trendy New York’s treacherous dating scene. --Carol Haggas

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (March 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316013587
• ISBN-13: 978-0316013581
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #799,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amusing, Gritty Look at Manhattan Love, February 9, 2009

By 

Jody (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Secrets to Happiness: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I would not jump to classify this book as "chick lit." The author, Sarah Dunn, tells a more realistic and gritty anti-love story through different characters throughout the novel. There are girlfriends, ex-husbands, boyfriends, boy-toys, work partners, pets, siblings - a variety of relationships are explored as the characters intertwine. All types of relationships can lead to or lead from one's personal quest for the secrets to happiness.

It takes a few chapters to get into this book, the main characters, Holly and Amanda, are not immediately like-able possessing a somewhat chilly city charm. By the end, though, I felt refreshed for choosing to read an interesting take on adult relationships and not another girl finds self, gets man, story.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No Secrets for me, June 20, 2009

By 

K. Herbrand - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secrets to Happiness: A Novel (Hardcover)

Based on the title, Secrets to Happiness, and the cute puppy on the cover, I was expecting a light summer read with a happy ending. Now, don't misunderstand me - I don't need a happy ending to enjoy a book - and this book did have a happy ending of sorts - it was just not what I was expecting. (I guess that is why they say don't judge a book by it's cover!)

Holly is the main character - she is middle-aged, divorced from a man she was still in love with, and her career is in a downward spiral. She had been a successful sitcom writer with Leonard - but had taken a break to write a book. (Leonard's career also took a nose dive after this when he decided to make a very very gay movie). The book was not the success she had hoped for and was pretty much about her ex-husband Alex, and her ex-boyfriend before the husband, Spencer.

Holly does some crazy things in the following months - I would say she was searching for that 'elusive' happiness. She has an affair with Lucas who is only 22 and the younger brother of her friend Betsy. Then she moves on to Jack who she met while he was having an affair with her married friend, Amanda. Somewhere in the midst of all this she adopts a dog, Chester, who has brain cancer.

I did not feel a connection to anyone in this book - and there were a lot of characters. I will admit that I had to go back occasionally to figure out who they were talking about - the characters just did not seem very distinctive for me. The book overall didn't hold any excitement or anticipation - it didn't seem to 'build' to a climax, but just sort of ended. I suppose that mirrors real life in some ways though - situations resolve, relationships evolve or end, but life continues on. Please take a look at some other reviews (below) - just because it wasn't for me, doesn't mean it won't be for you!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful escape, March 18, 2009

By 

Kyliegirl - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Secrets to Happiness: A Novel (Hardcover)

I loved this book. I've been waiting for it since I read The Big Love two years ago, and it didn't disappoint. The story subtly weaves together the lives of several New Yorkers wrestling with real questions about friendships, love, and how to live...I was captivated. It's been awhile since I started a book and didn't want to put it down, but this was one of those stories. Grab Secrets To Happiness for your next free afternoon--It will make you a little bit happier.