The Funeral Planner

by Lynn Isenberg

The Funeral Planner by Lynn Isenberg released on Aug 30, 2005 is available now for purchase.

Genres: Chick Lit, Fiction, Adult Fiction, Contemporary

377 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Her work includes the novels MY LIFE UNCOVERED , THE FUNERAL PLANNER GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE and THE FUNERAL PLANNER (soon to be a TV series) and the non-fiction GRIEF TRIBUTES: The Definitive Guide to Life Celebrations and GRIEF WELLNESS: The Definitive Guide to Dealing with Loss . Film/TV credits include MGM/UAs YOUNGBLOOD, Tri-Star/Columbias I LOVE YOU TO DEATH, Mistral Pictures TRUE VINYL, and The Fine Living Networks popular series I::DESIGN which she co-created and executive produced.

Isenberg promoted THE FUNERAL PLANNER by launching the real life business from the novel at www.LightsOutEnterprises.com, where she wrote and produced the tribute comedy "Jack the Mench," landing her appearances in The New York Times, The Today Show, Business Week, MSN.com, Israel's Globe, South Africa's Beeld, etc.

She is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English Language & Literature, a minor in Film Studies, and an MBA & Entrepreneurial Studies Audit. She is founder of the renowned Hollywood Literary Retreat www.HollywoodLiteraryRetreat.com.

Through her company Focus Media, Inc. (Finding Opportunities Creating Unified Success), Isenberg creates intellectual properties and consults for businesses operating in the digital content and entertainment marketing space.

Isenberg is a member of the WGAs New Media Writers Caucus. She speaks on Transmedia Storytelling and Book-Branded Integration.

About Focus Media, Inc.:
Focus Media, Inc. is an entertainment company and consulting firm providing content creation, business development, strategic marketing and public relations services to writers and businesses in the Transmedia space. Visit www.focusmediamarketing.com
For speaking engagements visit www.lynnisenberg.com.

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Reviews

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was so frustrating! I liked the start but the middle and end dragged on. Maddy is always being abused/ exploited by her arch rival who always ends up on top. There was so many deaths in this book. If she wasn’t a funeral planner, would there have been so many people to die?? I didn’t find it realistic bc 5+ people closer to her died in a matter of weeks/ months.

And so many unnecessary romances. The main character hooks up with her female best friend helping her while the other is in a relationship (who she eventually marries) as well as the person working as her venture capitalist. The relationship between Maddy and Victor annoyed me. They never dated and hooked up one night then he abandoned her for months.. Never said why he abruptly ended things. Then he comes back and spends days at the bar bc Maddy won’t acknowledge him. Then he proposes!! They have never gone on a date and hooked up once.

I found it extremely odd that Maddy stole some of the ashes of her dead uncle. Which she carried with her in a ziploc bag. Which she would talk to. Or sprinkle ashes on her feet as she walked.. All in all a very odd book that puts too much importance on needing a man to be happy in life.

[jennifer shank · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up? Maybe just 3 stars. If I don’t think about then it’s a decent read. If I analyze it, then the rating goes down. Cute quick read. Frustrating how Mandy kept getting thwarted by her her arch rival. The relationships between characters were very undeveloped. Everything jumped to being wrapped up too quickly. It was a bit weird. But overall, entertaining enough.

[Darinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Light, interesting read.

[ShyAnn64 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Madison aka Maddy Banks has been going from entrepreneur career through entrepreneur career, with many failures. After going to a funeral for a friend, she realizes her calling. Planning personalized funerals, with the new company she's going to build called Lights Out. She gets emotional and financial help from her Uncle Sam. And before she can even begin her new career, Sam dies of Cancer. His is the first furneral she plans, and it's a hit. Soon, she has people lined up to do funerals for. One costumer even wanted his furneral twice. Just so he could live through the first one. But things take a bad turn when her arch rival, the man behind satabogiging all of her other businesses she's had, decided to open his own funeral company, and steals all of Maddy's ideas, as well as many of Maddy's backers and clients. At the advice of her handsome Venture Capitalist, she decides to take time out for herself, and to properly grieve her friend Tara and her uncle. After spending time in Ann Arbor, she not only regroups, but with an old friend of her uncle's who used to own a funeral parlor, makes a pamplet on how to grieve, and hold grieving seminars. With this new info, she puts Lights Out back on track, and even gets the upperhand on her competition.

[Tonya · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok. There we're points where the writing seems like it was just rambling on for no apparent reason.

[Alex Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seemed to drag on...very far fetched. I liked a lot of parts, but the main character was frustrating! I hate to give a 2 star but this one just didn’t do it for me.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK book

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not just your average chicklit fluff, this one focuses on a failed entrepreneur who takes on a new concept after a close friend dies- funeral planning- and both she and her clients see some unexpected results. Not morbid at all- it's both funny and philosophical, and eye-opening when it comes to the way we live our lives and the way we want to be remembered.

Edited to add: I apparently was much more impressed by this book than this review indicates, as I found the following, longer one on a blog I had that I'd almost forgotten about. Since I wrote it, my husband has died, and re-reading the review makes me think I want to go back and read this again to see if my thoughts and experience of it have changed. Here's the longer review, written on Valentine's Day of 2007:

Not too long ago I read The Funeral Planner by Lynn Isenberg. No, this is not a nonfiction guide to planning your own funeral, although attending to those details in advance isn't a bad plan- I speak from experience when I say that nobody grieving is going to be in a frame of mind where they want to do it themselves in a matter of days. Nope, surprisingly enough this book falls into the chicklit genre, although it's about as far from Shopaholic and Bridget Jones as you can get. Our main character is a brilliant entrepreneur whose rival always manages to steal her ideas before she has a chance to establish them successfully, and at the beginning of the book she attends the funeral of a good friend and finds it to be an empty ceremony that fails to reflect the life and values of the person she knew. Her response to her grief: obviously people need someone to help them plan their funerals in advance so that they get what they want- a way for the people they care about to have a personal experience that expresses who they really are.



What's interesting about this book is that it seems that planning your funeral in advance means really looking closely at the person you've become and if that's the person you want to be remembered as. As she interviews the associates of one CEO, it becomes clear not just to her but to him as well that he really has no friends, has never traveled, and has no interests outside work. A depressing realization, to be sure, but one that makes a successful man bulldozing his way through a competitive industry realize that maybe it's time to visit other places, try new things, and meet and enjoy different kinds of people.



The love story is understated: the faith of the venture capitalist who backs her business plan ventures outside the formal relationship to become a friendship, and then something more. Sorry if that spoils it for you. But the real gift of the story is the way the main character deals with her grief, finally confronting it in a manner that, in its offer of hope to the bereaved, overturns her rival's enterprise and leads to important realizations about herself. It's amazing to me that Isenberg was able to deal with this issue with gentle humor and respect in a genre that is mostly about obsessing over single guys and shoes(a broad generalization, to be sure, as many books in the genre are well-written and I have read quite a few) . It's an original take well worth reading if you know someone who is grieving, or if you're looking for an intelligent, if not weighty, book to read on a Sunday afternoon. Even those who generally avoid chicklit will find Isenberg worth reading, and I can't recommend this one enough.

[Nikkie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Madison aka Maddy Banks has been going from entrepreneur career through entrepreneur career, with many failures. After going to a funeral for a friend, she realizes her calling. Planning personalized funerals, with the new company she's going to build called Lights Out. She gets emotional and financial help from her Uncle Sam. And before she can even begin her new career, Sam dies of Cancer. His is the first furneral she plans, and it's a hit. Soon, she has people lined up to do funerals for. One costumer even wanted his furneral twice. Just so he could live through the first one. But things take a bad turn when her arch rival, the man behind satabogiging all of her other businesses she's had, decided to open his own funeral company, and steals all of Maddy's ideas, as well as many of Maddy's backers and clients. At the advice of her handsome Venture Capitalist, she decides to take time out for herself, and to properly grieve her friend Tara and her uncle. After spending time in Ann Arbor, she not only regroups, but with an old friend of her uncle's who used to own a funeral parlor, makes a pamplet on how to grieve, and hold grieving seminars. With this new info, she puts Lights Out back on track, and even gets the upperhand on her competition.

I have to say one of the things that I liked about this book is that the main character is bi, and even though she winds up with a man at the end, there are some scenes with her and her ex-girlfriend, whom she remains close with. This book made me laugh and cry at the same time through a few chapters of it. The bad guys in the book get their just deserts, and Maddy also realizes what unconditional love from a dog can do to someone in need, like herself.

[Kelly Lamb · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was no good from the start, but I have a personal policy of never quitting a book, so I suffered through it to the end. The book was difficult to read, with poor grammar and sentence structure throughout...I often had to read some sentences 2-3 times because they ran on. (I often asked myself if this book had an editor.) On that note, there were also several editorial bits that weren't caught...no one can run a "six mile marathon" and Victor's sister's name changes from Shoshanna to Shauna partway through the book. Things like this made it difficult to read.

On top of all that, the dialogue and events throughout the book were just completely hard to believe. And the eventual story between Victor and Maddy literally made me groan.

I usually give chick lit books a little extra leeway, but this one was just bad.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Madison Banks really doesn't have much of a life outside of work. She develops business ideas, starts them, and then they are promptly stolen by the same guy, over and over. Can that really happen? There are lots of coincidences all over this book that are a stretch, like lots of people dying (because she's in the funeral business) and sometimes will have paragraphs of details that seemed, to me, completely irrelevant. Oh, I'm so glad she chooses no sugar in her coffee so she doesn't have a sugar crash halfway through her presentation? Was that really necessary to tell me? I enjoyed seeing the business process, and learning what things like "venture capitalists" really did, but overall, I think my time could have been better spent.

[Clare · Rating 2 out of 5]

A weird take on a chick lit book - it had lots of the usual parts, but never really meshed with me. I found Maddy Banks strange and unsympathetic. She's an unusually moral girl - as she reminds us frequently, yet she has lesbian sympathy sex with an ex, who's also dating someone; she makes a point of never dating her investors yet she ends up marrying her VC; she takes vicious revenge on her enemy who's in jail after insisting that she take the high ground all along; and she acts like a total bitch to the guy who's proposing to her.

I guess the whole point of the book is that you should live a life that people celebrate after you're gone, but I knew I didn't want to pick up the sequel after I finished - and that says something about the book itself, don't you think?

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very, very, very business-like. The main focus of the book tries to be loss and hope and trying, but it honestly revolves around the business aspect of entrepreneurship. It gets a little tiresome, but it's a good book behind that.

The book's saving grace, in my opinion, is the bit of romance infused in it. It's just enough to add to the novel and make it seem all the more hopeful. After the book deals with so much loss, it's nice to have a few happy spins.

[Monica Akinyi Odhiambo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book because it was all about self worth and believing in yourself. It took Maddy years before she could realize her dream. Am glad they took us through the process of her business plan. That was extensive. It's such a great book for entrepreneurs. I just felt like her life was all about her business ideas, and she couldn't even relate well with people She had no social life, no me time, it was suffocating. The best thing was stepping away from all that drama, finding a peaceful environment and just learning to live life without regrets.
Best books I got to read from Wattpad.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

the storyline was quite interesting in some parts .. what got me most with this book was the inspiration to start my own business of some sort - to find my niche again ... I've come up with some really creative ideas - but never followed through with them ... maybe finally i will with something in the works :)

[Christianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty one-dimensional characters. Everybody is either all good or all evil. Some parts of it read like a business plan instead of a story. Found the main character pretty judgmental. Then the author throws in a past bisexual relationship. Sort of jarring and not sure how it added to the story. Overall? Meh.

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book seemed to have an identity crisis. It couldn't decide if it was a primer for a business management course, a self-help book on dealing with grief or if it was just a really lame romance novel. In trying to do to much, it ended up doing none of it well. I would never have wasted the time it took to finish it if it wasn't the January selection for my book club.

[Elizabeth Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay so the deal is that I didn't finish it. I got about 40 pages in and I couldn't get into it. I refused to push my way through hoping it would get better. I gave it 1 star (I wish I could give it 1 1/2) because it was kind of smart and funny but the story just wasn't doing it for me.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book pretty easy to get into and stick with. It's not one of the best ones that I've ever read, but I enjoyed it none the less. Very likeable main character - you can't help but root for her, celebrate her victories and get discouraged by her defeats.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I try to give the benefit of the doubt to chick-lit but there were so many grammatical and editorial errors that I wanted to pull out a red pen and scratch all over the book. It's sad because some of the ideas were pretty original.

[Jenelle Melchior · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is great for business students and people who are interested in business. It has a lot of technical business terms in it, but even if you aren't a business student, you cans still enjoy the book.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It definitely wasn't what I expected. Madison Banks endears herself to your heart for quest for honesty, love & self worth! This book is a great accidental read that picks up your spirits & gets you motivated to tackle all of your challenges.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the story, the concept, but hated that the character's parents were always referred to by their first names yet she called them Mom and Dad. I would have to remind myself who they were when she referenced them.

[Deborah Pratt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book with a lot of heart. She tackles a subject I do often find uncomfortable with passion and dignity and made me think how much of death if part of life. It also was an amazing course in business neatly disguised inside the story.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great "beach or airplane" read. I dont think its predictability detracted from teh interesting subject. Ambitious young entrepreneur constantly thwarted in her plans.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Though parts were semi-predictable, I still think it held enough originality to make it interesting.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great concept. Boring book. Which was really too bad.

[Sherri Bryant]

The book started out interesting but with one scene I was completely turned off of the entire book. The scene was out of place in the story and was, I felt, completely out of character for Maddy.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got two thirds of the way through and just couldn't bring myself to finish it. Too slow and boring.

[Kristyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just picked it up because it related to my area of study but found it to be quite interesting though a little outdated at this time. I intend to read the next 2 from the series =)