Hey Ladies! is featured on my 2018 Summer Reading Guide (check out the guide here).

THE DETAILS:

Title: Hey Ladies!
Author: Michelle Markowitz and Caroline Moss
Genre: Epistolary novel
Pub date: May 1, 2018
Read if you like: TTYL, Sex and the City, Girls on HBO.

MORGAN’S THOUGHTS:

Written entirely in emails, texts, and various illustrations, Hey Ladies! is certainly a unique read. I love books that are composed in inventive ways; I was especially a fan of this style when I was younger. I adored books like TTYL and TTFN, The Year of Secret Assignments, P.S. Longer Letter Later, reading them over and over again, and later found that same joy as an adult in Where’d You Go Bernadette and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.  So it’s safe to say that this format was going to work for me.

This book is light and satirical and funny – and proof that preparing for a wedding is no joke.  I’d definitely recommend this as a summer read if you’re looking to add something that is just plain fun to your stack.

To be completely honest, I did have a few issues with this book.  I wanted a bit more honesty from the characters, amidst all of the satire. They were highly entertaining but completely over the top in a way that felt disingenuous after the first 100 pages.  Yes, some women speak or write like that, but no one sounds that way the entire time. I wished for more truth in the characters – I think the comedy would have been even more entertaining if Markowitz and Moss had given the women a greater amount of depth.  It would have been believable – sometimes it is easier to allow yourself to be vulnerable in a written form than it is in person. Who among us hasn’t found it was possible to say something in a letter or an email that we couldn’t verbalize in conversation? I know I have. Those are the chances we have to apologize honestly or to write a truth we’ve been too afraid to speak aloud.  That’s why I think I love epistolary novels so much, for the honesty that the encourage.

I felt this was a missed opportunity to get readers to truly connect with the story of these eight friends.  I certainly enjoyed reading this book, but I think the lack of vulnerability is what is holding it back from being a truly memorable read.

SYNOPSIS: (AS TOLD BY THE BACK OF THE BOOK)

Hey Ladies! is a laugh-out-loud read that follows a fictitious but all too familiar group of eight 20- and 30- something female friends for one year of their lives.  Told through a series of email chains, text messages, and illustrations, this book takes you along for the roller coaster ride of holiday celebrations, book clubs, summer house rentals, wedding showers, Instagram stalking, brunches, breakups, and, of course, all the inside jokes and harsh truths that only best friends share.