I'd never read Lipman but got sucked in on a recent Target run. Ms. Demeanor is a romcom, and as such, typical territory for me. But it's much wrier and drier than my usual fare, which I found kind of interesting. Its heroine, Jane Morgan, is a no-nonsense litigator who never met a problem she couldn't debate her way out of. That is, until she's caught doing the dirty on her apartment roof with Noah, an entry-level lawyer from her firm. Noah gets a slap on the wrist, but Jane gets slapped with an ankle bracelet. Forced to make the most of being confined to her building, she decides to get to know her neighbors, which she was too busy to do when banking billable hours. One of them, Perry, turns out to be sporting ankle bling too (he stole a teapot lid from the auction house where he worked, but he had a really good reason!), and they quickly bond. A lot of other stuff happens, but I found it less, ahem, engaging than the paradoxically unlikely-yet-written-in-the-stars relationship between just-answer-the-question-Jane and Perry-the-petty-thief. What can I say? I love love.
By contrast, Hoover's It Starts With Us is a lot heavier. As you know, I read its predecessor, It Ends With Us, for book club. Fans were so attached to that novel that they campaigned for Hoover to write a sequel, and although she never planned to do so (It Ends With Us having wrapped up exactly as it should have), It Starts With Us appeared on bookshelves -- and yes, in book club too. You know how you watch a TV series and it ends and you're sad to see it go but you also don't want a reboot because that would undo all the hard-won resolutions of the finale? Well, that's how I feel about It Ends With Us, and I can't even blame Hoover because it seems that she feels this way too. That said, I did enjoy reading more about Atlas in It Starts With Us. This real-deal knight-in-shining armor is the most compelling part of both books, a reminder that good guys -- and indeed hope -- exist.
And that's the end of that. If you get only one thing out of it, then let it be this:
Look before you leap -- or *bleep* -- from a roof.