Slightly Single [Paperback]

In this shopworn, Bridget Jonesy tale, Tracey Spadolini is desperate for love. Not surprisingly, given the genre, Tracey smokes, drinks and eats too much, and frets about her romantic life. Even more predictably, the 24-year-old plumpish protagonist from a sprawling Italian family in upstate New York has settled for an unfulfilling entry-level ad agency job with a smarmy boss, and lives in a "drab East Village flat." The good news is that Tracey's friends pretty Kate, a bleached blonde with "fake aquamarine pupils," and gay stereotype Raphael, a Ricky Martin look-alike love her. The bad news: life isn't peachy in the true love department. Will, Tracey's handsome, waspish boyfriend, is an actor with little talent and no time for Tracey. Their relationship "has been about as stable as an Isuzu Trooper at eighty mph on a hairpin curve," but a decent alternative turns up in attentive Buckley, a freelance copywriter. When Will leaves town to act in summer stock, a dejected Tracey starts slimming down, boning up on literary classics like Moby Dick and generally re-evaluating her life. Markham a pseudonym for Wendy Corsi Staub, award-winning romance author and ghostwriter for the likes of Fabio has done little here to break out of pulp romance and into literature. The narcissistic upsets of a shallow crew of 20-something singles and the hackneyed ending now are sadly out of date and hold little appeal. Agent, Laura Blake Peterson.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Tracey Spadolini has always been insecure. She's somewhat overweight, unhappy in her job, and dating Will, a handsome but commitment-phobic actor. Will is spending the summer in upstate New York, leaving a morose Tracey behind in Manhattan, so she decides to use the time to turn herself into the woman she has always wanted to be. She goes on a diet and starts to read classics. She also meets Buckley, a good-looking, sweet guy who pursues a friendship with her even after he mistakes their first trip to the movies together as a date. Tracey can't help but compare him to Will, and Buckley comes out ahead every time. Will hardly ever calls and seems hesitant when she tells him she wants to come to visit him, but Tracey is sure that he'll be won over by her new look. It takes Tracey a maddeningly long time to come to her senses, but it's an undeniably fun journey for the reader. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

For every girl who's ever endured a long, hot urban summer on her own, Slightly Single is the summer breeze you've been waiting for!

A heat wave in Manhattan is enough to drive a girl crazy, and for Tracey Spadolini, a 24-year old New York transplant who's been "left behind" for the summer, there's even more to sweat about. Her Slightly Significant Other, Will, will be returning from summer stock in September, to pick up where they left off. (Or will he?)

But, in the days after Will's departure, Tracey decides it's time for a reality check. Her un-air-conditioned East Village apartment is a dump, her entry-level ad job sucks, her thighs don't seem to be getting any thinner, and Will seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. So, Tracey, with the help of her friends and one very attentive guy, decides to spend her summer reinventing herself . . . and taking a chance on liking the new woman she becomes.

A refreshingly honest account of universal female dilemmas, Slightly Single is an engaging story of one young woman's search for happiness.

Wendy Markham is a pseudonym for bestselling, award-winning novelist Wendy Corsi Staub, who has written more than forty fiction and nonfiction books for adults and teenagers in various genres -- among them contemporary and historical romance, suspense, mystery, television and movie tie-in and biography. She has coauthored a hardcover mystery series with former New York City mayor Ed Koch and has ghostwritten books for various well-known personalities, including the cover model Fabio. A small-town girl at heart, she was born and raised in Dunkirk, New York, on the shores of Lake Erie and in the heart of the western New York snow belt Wendy was in the third grade when she declared that she intended to become an author when she grew up. With that unwavering goal in mind, encouraged by her remarkably supportive parents, she moved alone to Manhattan at twenty-one. Wendy worked as an office temp, freelance copywriter, advertising account coordinator and book editor before selling her first novel, which went on to win the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Young Adult Book. She has since received numerous positive reviews and achieved bestseller status, most notably for the psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Very happily married with two children, Wendy now writes full-time and lives in a cozy old house in suburban New York, proving that childhood dreams really can come true.