THE SMART ONE

Author: Ellen Meister ISBN: 9780061129629 8/2008 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: AVON A

Once upon a time there were three sisters all living very different lives... Juggling divorce, unemployment and her parents' disappointment, Bev, the smart one, is trading in her artistic dreams for chalk dust and a teacher's desk. Her older sister, Clare, the pretty one, copes with the success of marrying well: the perfect house, the perfect kids, and the perfect suburban life. For the youngest sister, Joey, the wild one, the world's a stage, even though her fifteen minutes of fame as the lead singer of a one-hit rock band has long fizzled. As the sisters journey to resolve the old slights and jealousies of childhood, they encounter a handsome comedy writer worth fighting over, two little people with big ideas, an aging neighbor with dementia, and a decades-old pregnant body in an industrial drum. Digging for answer, the begin to reveal the secrets of their own lives...

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Ellen Meister's THE SMART ONE is a charming story about familial roles that shows life in suburbia in all its guises.

Three sisters, each with her own expectations and position in a family, are thrown together just when they most need each other. One is pretty, one is a druggie/performer, and one, the primary focus of this story, is the smart one. Unfortunately, at this point the smart sister is feeling anything but brilliant. Her life is in shambles, she's contemplating a career move and her marriage has just broken up. She's back in the neighborhood where she grew up and dealing with the same people she thought she'd left behind. One of those people is Kenny, the heartthrob of her teenage years who cheated on her with her own sister. So many issues need to be resolved, so many heartbreaks to be mended, and that is before Bev and her sisters, along with Kenny, find a body in an industrial drum.

I liked everything about this story. That's not to say there weren't difficult points for these characters—there were, plenty of them. It doesn't mean that the whole plot was a peaches-and-cream romance—it wasn't. And saying that I liked everything about this doesn't mean there weren't parts where I wished I could have made things easier for Bev and the girls, and even Kenny. There were. Lots of them. But the fact that this author had those points in this book, and somehow managed to resolve all of them so successfully with an ending that is wonderfully appropriate, is the reason I liked it all. This story is realistic, peopled with characters who have ordinary lives, with their share of hardships and troubles. Still, there's a reasonable ending for all of them, one that shows that even in good families there's room for growth and, sometimes, an adjustment of family roles and expectations.

If you're looking for a smart, humorous story about families, look no further. THE SMART ONE by Ellen Meister is a down-to-earth story that made me wish I had a sister of my own!

Kay James