Customer Reviews

Wolves in Chic Clothing: A Novel

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

After being entertained but a tad disappointed with The Right Address, the first novel from these authors, I was much more pleased with their second novel. Wolves in Chic Clothing follows Julia, a beautiful California transplant who dreams of being a jewelry designer while working as a salesgirl at Pelham's, a large, famous NYC jewelry store.

Julia's life changes one day when she delivers a necklace to Lell Pelham for her wedding, and gets adopted by Lell and her friends- Polly, a catty, wealthy woman who ignores her baby son, and Hope, a genuinely nice and happy person, who has to hide her and her husband's money troubles from friends, despite being pretty happy. The book follows the adventures of all of the characters, but mostly focuses on Julia, who accidentally catches the eye of Lell's new husband, Willoughby.

This novel was fun and gossipy, but had a lot more heart than the Right Address, and more likeable characters. It was funny to see a few characters from the first book come through to the second! I great, fun read.

Jill Kargman and Carrie Karyasov, authors of The Right Address, are back with their second novel about the elites population of New York. One character says, "'I hate gossips...there are two girls that I'm sort of friends with, and the have a book deal to write about twenty- something Park Avenue debutantes. I think its really shameful and tacky.'" Or maybe not so.

Lell Pellham is the heiress to one of New York's most famous jewelry stores (think Tiffany's and its ilk). Julia is an assistant at the main store in the engagement ring section when this story begins. However, for some mysterious reason, she is given the all-important task of delivering a set of highly expensive jewels to the famous heiress just moments before she is set to walk down the aisle. Lell and her friends Hope and Polly are impressed with Julia, who has a passion for jewelry design; and Lell immediately hires Julia as her "deputy artistic director."

Thus begins a contest between the three friends: Lell, who from the beginning is unhappy in her marriage; Hope, who is unhappy because she doesn't have as much money as the others do (though probably the most down-to-earth of the group); and Polly, who enjoys preying upon "lesser, more unfortunate" people. The three friends set themselves a task: to makeover Julia into a bridge-playing debutante, just like themselves. Eliza Doolittle, as the dust cover of the book pronounces.

At first, Julia is flattered- who wouldn't be? Borrowed couture clothing, advice from people who style themselves her "friends," and invites to some of the hottest parties and benefits in the city. Of course, all that glitters isn't gold, as the old adage goes, and Julia quickly becomes disenchanted with the lifestyle pretty quickly. Added on top of this is Lell's new husband- Willoughby, or "Will," for short. He's a playboy who immediately sets Julia at the top of list of women to woo.

In short, this is a witty, novel, perhaps even better than The Right Address, the first endeavor of these two novelists. Karyasov and Kargman give us an intimate picture of the materialistic, superficial lives of the jet-setting women who live on Park Avenue through the eyes of an outsider. And, contrary to what Lell says, that endeavor is not "shameful and tacky."

If you've ever longed to peek into the world of New York society princesses, then WOLVES IN CHIC CLOTHING is definitely a book you'll want to pick up.

Julia Pearce is a beautiful, hip, but middle class salesgirl at Pelham's Jewelry, one of the top jewelry stores in the world. When she is unexpectedly asked by the store's heiress, Lell Pelham, to deliver the necklace that she'll be wearing on her wedding day, Julia is swooped in on by the society girls who want a 'project' and decide that she would benefit from a society makeover.

Soon, Julia is at the top of the heap, attending various benefits and believed to be the heiress of a glass-blowing family. However, when an attraction develops between her and Lell's new husband, she finds herself on precarious ground and eventually falls from the top back down to where she began.

For a fun, light read, you can't go wrong with Karasyov and Kargman, who also wrote THE RIGHT ADDRESS - another entertaining novel about breaking into the thick crust of American high society.

This book was so eye-popingly bad that it made Bergdorf Blondes seem like Tender is the Night...don't waste your time, don't waste your money.....it amazes me that drivel like this still gets published all in the name of the ever so popular "Chic Lit"....please! Spare me!

I have tried to get through many books lately and have just felt bored with all of them. And finally, here was a book to finally pull me out of my slump. This book really captured my attention! I found it hard to put down and I loved how it was about a few different characters instead of just Julia. This chic lit topic of "Mean Girls" hasn't been overused in other books so I guess that's why I liked it. I was getting sick of breakup stories and "trying to find myself" fiction. I highly recommend this!

Sometimes I feel the world moves too fast for me. Honestly, it seems like just yesterday I was one of the last voracious-reading, Vogue-subscribing women to discover Chick Lit. It was Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series that changed me from a critic of the genre to a fan, although I guess we could really trace it the whole way back to Helen Fielding and her every woman's hero, Bridget Jones. But I digress. From Kinsella I zoomed on to Weiner and Wolf, Keyes and Zigman, spending an entire summer month flitting from one book to the next. I even came out of the closet and reviewed several Chick Lit books for a local newspaper, declaring my love for this previously forbidden (in my eyes) fruit.

Suddenly, Chick Lit has taken a back burner to the latest media darling --- Gossip Lit. In a way, it started with Shopaholic Becky Bloomwood's penchant for fashion; the pages dripped with names from both magazine and runway. And who can forget Weiner's Maggie and her addiction to Manolos? THE NANNY DIARIES came next and started naming not just designers, but the doyennes of the Upper East Side who couldn't be bothered with mothering the heirs they were forced to bear. (Some City residents at the time swore they knew who the real Mrs. X was.) THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and its loosely veiled Anna Wintour trash-fest upped the ante, and now the people we read about in the pages of Vogue were actually showing up in fiction --- never directly outed, mind you, but I'm sure that armed with the vivid descriptions the books provided, it was all too easy for those in the know to know who was being, you know, trashed.

Enter Carrie Karasyov and Jill Kargman. They are the co-authors of last year's fun read, THE RIGHT ADDRESS. This spring they are back with WOLVES IN CHIC CLOTHING, Gossip Lit at its best. The plot is fairly straightforward. Meet Julia, a transplant from California with aspirations of becoming a jewelry designer. Upon her arrival in the Big Apple a year earlier, she landed a plummy job at Pelham Jewelers (umm, can you say Tiffany's), scores a cool apartment in a trendy neighborhood with Douglas, her totally fabulous gay co-worker, and there you have it --- life is just GRAND for Julia.

Meet Lell Pelham, heiress of Pelham's, New York Socialite, leader of a small pack of "twenty-something Park Avenue debutantes" just like her (well, not as rich, but in terms of hair and clothes, almost carbon copies) who is about to marry, according to her mother and the rest of New York, the perfect man --- Willoughby Banks, a man with a roving eye, not just for other women but also for Lell's checkbook. He has the Mayflower breeding, but unfortunately for Will, he's never had the money...until now.

Fate throws Julia into the wolf den when she is summoned to Lell's wedding to assist with last-minute jewelry adjustments. In a nanosecond she transforms the traditional Pelham's necklaces she has delivered into something completely new and trendy that catches the attention of her boss, Lell. Upon her return from a three-week honeymoon (during which the happy couple becomes very unhappily bored), she makes Julia her assistant as well as her new winter project. Because Julia's last name is also that of a well-to-do glass blowing family in Vermont, these ladies who lunch think they have another heiress in their midst. Unbeknownst to Lell, her incredibly shallow, always caustic friend, Polly, has made the same Pygmalion decision that sets Julia up like "an accidental pawn in...a sidewalk sized game of chess."

Julia goes from shop girl to chi-chi overnight, but discovers that the golden life of the city's young crème de la crème isn't as wonderful as it looks. Lell's quartet immediately starts telling her what to eat (Salades Folles) and what not (cheeseburgers --- "There's nothing worse than being fat" declares Polly), which nail polish to use (Ballet Slippers, NOT Wicked) and why she needs to lose her anklet. They also begin to ensure that she receives invitations to all the must-be-seen-at charity events around town. In this arena, Karasyov and Kargman have come up with some pretty funny acronyms such as the benefit dinner for FADD (Fight Attention Deficit Disorder) and the GROG ball (Get Rid of Gangrene).

Julia's life is not the only metamorphosis. Lell reconnects with a man she has been in and out of love with for years, but who she rejected for marriage --- or did she? Her husband's eye already has wandered and where it has come to rest, I can't divulge without ruining the surprise. Hope questions the cost and benefits of the New York lifestyle she and her husband are going broke trying to lead (most of these charity dinners have tickets that start at $300 a person and lunch with the girls usually runs $95). Polly, despite having a talent and taste for stirring up trouble, begins to wonder how much she really needs her deadweight of a husband and starts to see that she is repeating a parenting pattern begun by her own mother who, living in France with her latest husband and two children, has no time for her as a daughter and gives her very little regard even as a social contact.

Don't worry, though. These storylines are still set against a dazzling backdrop of beautiful people, gorgeous city settings, exquisite clothes, and a society world that, while fun to watch, most of us will never step foot in --- which isn't necessarily a bad thing!

The co-authors take a little jab at themselves on page 51, when Lell Pelham denounces Gossip Lit as "really shameful and tacky." There are also some brief appearances by the villains of THE RIGHT ADDRESS --- Joan Coddington and Wendy Marshal --- that are fun to spot. This being Gossip Lit, one doesn't have to worry about a neatly tied, somewhat happy ending. That's guaranteed for the sympathetic characters who come off as strong individuals, and definitely not for the ones we love to hate. There is, however, an interesting taking-stock syndrome that we see traveling amongst the key players like the very diseases they throw benefits to combat. One wonders if this also is happening to the real-life society faces we see every month on the party page. One can hope.

--- Reviewed by Jamie Layton

Julia Pearce, a hip, downtown salesgirl at Pelham's jewelry store, finds her social life turned on its head when she is asked to deliver a necklace to the store's young heiress, Lell Pelham, on Lell's wedding day. Beguiled by Julia's earnest cluelessness and her vintage-chic vibe, Lell and her gang adopt Julia, and "Eliza Doolittle" her into passing as the heiress to a posh Park Avenue family fortune, just for a laugh.
Just the escape from the bleak headlines of the papers and TV. Pure fun with a good and bad side to choose between. The story is crisp, but has been told before. It is just the tonic for a weekend with dreary skies.

A fun and funny journey into the personas and purses of NYC gals. Guaranteed hysterics and howls, along with keen insight into the social circles swirling through the grids of Manhattan. An awesome spring summer beach read or lazy Sunday morning bed read... get a large iced coffee and enjoy, you wont be able to put this down until you've drank every last sip!!

I loved this-- totally light and easy-- I breezed through it quickly and it made me smile, it's cool glimpse into the Manhattan uptown girls' world and I liked it even more than the writers' last book.

I live in Mississippi and haven't gotten up to New York since my whole family went to see Cats almost twenty years ago -- but after reading "Wolves in Chic Clothing" I'm determined to visit again soon (if not to hang out with the types of characters in this joy of a novel)! Gimlet-eyed authors Karasyov and Kargman have crafted an Eliza Doolittle tale that is by turns biting, hilarious, and poignant: a true snapshot of a certain set in a certain place at a certain time that will appeal to a wide readership. I stayed up way past my bedtime finishing it (in one sitting!) and cannot recommend it highly enough. Julia felt like a friend by the book's conclusion. Will now read "The Right Address" and look forward to future books by this talented pair.