Review: The Red Book by Deborah Copaken Kogan

by:  Deborah Copaken Kogan
published by:  Hyperion
publish date:  April 3, 2012

The Red Book is the story of 4 Harvard roommates coming together for their 20th reunion.  It tells the story of Mia, Jane, Clover, and Addison.  Not just them, but their families and other people in their graduating class.  All the triumphs that graduates from are expected to have over 20 years and all the surprising failures that they've experienced.

Mia was a fantastic stage actress in college and she married a fantastic director.  She expected to have a fabulous career as an film actress.  Four children, 2 commercials and 1 home renovation later, her life isn't exactly where she expected it to be and the reunion changes her life drastically.  Jane, a recent widow, comes to the reunion on the heels of her mother's death just after finding out her new boyfriend cheated on her...only to meet her former husband's lover.  Addison, an experimental lesbian in college, is coming to realize that maybe she wasn't experimenting after all and her marriage to her husband is falling apart.  When she gets arrested on the way to the reunion, the troubles of her marriage are brought in to full focus and it's her former lesbian lover that bails her out and helps her to put her life on the right path.

I wasn't sure I was going to like The Red Book.  I'm not a huge fan of "Chick Lit", women's relationship literature, whatever you want to call it, but The Red Book was great.  It was hysterically funny at times.  Mia's son and Addison's daughter hooked up in Jane's basement at one point and I was dying laughing at the whole scene.  Read the book just for that part alone.

The Red Book was very well written.  I liked the way that it was organized.  The real  Red Book is a Harvard Publication that comes out every 5 years to update alumni with what everyone is doing.  So this Red Book had entries like that Red Book.  The audiobook was awesome too.  I highly recommend it.

I hope Mrs. Kogan is hard at work on her next fiction book, because I'm excited to read it!