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The Playgroup
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Before she signed up for the mommy role, Ellie Fuller was a stand-up comic, a good best friend, and a secret bulimic. As part of her recovery she adopts a whole new lifestyle, but when she takes a knowing step into unknown territory, that recovery and everything else is suddenly in jeopardy. At the Park Avenue preschool where Ellie takes her daughter, she meets Missy Hanov
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Hardcover, 352 pages
Published
September 15th 2003
by St. Martin's Press
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So I get in my friend's van to get out of the rain at the soccer game both our kids are playing in (so whatever, I am not hardcore.) And my friend goes, "Oh my god you have to read this" and she digs around behind the passenger seat and tosses me this book. I have this thing about needing to read any book that lands on me. She told me, "it's not the best book in the world or anything, and really it has little to do with an actual playgroup except kinda, but, you should read this." So I did. As a
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I really liked the first half of this book - it's about a woman who enrolls her toddler in a prestigious New York City playgroup (sounded like a preschool to me) and feels like her lifestyle - breastfeeding her other baby, not having a nanny - makes her an outcast. Immediately I got a vibe like the Odd Mom Out show i've been enjoying on Bravo.
But this book takes a turn - a weird one. There are enough complexities to the main character's background to satisfy a book - she is recovering from an ea ...more
But this book takes a turn - a weird one. There are enough complexities to the main character's background to satisfy a book - she is recovering from an ea ...more

I picked this book up at the library, and in reading the dust jacket, I believed it was similiar to "The Nanny Diaries". A semi fictional, what things are really like on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That was NOT the case. While there were one or two mentions of the actual playgroup, most of it was dedicated to the sex life and lesbian affair of the main character. While I have nothing against books that involve sex, it was not what I was looking for. I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone
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Spencer sacrifices character development to focus on hacky jokes and the upstairs/downstairs nature of the upper west and east sides of manhattan. But it ALSO tells the story of a comedian working towards a pitch to a major network. But it ALSO tells the story of a woman whose marriage falls apart. But it ALSO tells the story of a recovering bulemic. Every chapter includes at least one graphic sex scene, completely off-tone from the rest of the book. It's her first novel, which is clear by how a
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I picked up this book because it said it mainly was about a stay at home mom who is trying to find a balance between kids and life - aren't we all. LOL It took a turn that I wasn't expecting and at times was a bit unbelievable - I just had a hard time believing the main character sometimes. As the story went on, it began to fall together and turned out to be a pretty good story. It is explicit in some parts, so if that's not your thing, I wouldn't reccommend it to you. Otherwise, it's a quick re
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This book is very sexual. I didn't know it when I bought it online. The cover only says its about a stay at home mom who is struggling to find a balance between kids and keeping from going crazy. But its a whole another world when you read it. It was really good. All my girlfriends have read it and liked it.
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Not what I was expecting at all. It got quite sexual and while I don't have a problem with that; there was just so much that it got quite tedious. I also really disliked the main character. She'd be mad and frustrated at her mom and then all of a sudden wanting to hug her for no real apparent reason. Luckily it was a quick read.
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I picked this up on a whim at the library. I wanted to like this but it was off-putting. Perhaps it's because I'm past this point in my life, as my kids are moving out of the plagroup phase. This characters just didn't resonate with me.
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This book wasn't quite what I expected. It took a few uncomfortable turns. It was a quick read and, in the end, proved to be a pretty decent story.
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