To: Cannonball Read readers
From: J
Date: 7 Jun 2018 at 9:00 p.m.
Subject: Girls, Friends, Girlfriends, and Frenemies
YOU GUYS, I’M SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK!
The Hey Ladies are back in a book-length adventure recounting one young woman’s year-long engagement and the chaos it incites within her friend group. The competing plans, the hurt feelings (intentional and unintentional), the subtle ways friends support and undermine one another: all are on full display in this light, fun beach read.
Readers who remember the column on the now-defunct The Toast will be happy to hear that all the original ladies are here: Ali the social-climbing schemer, Jen the smug fiancee married, Nicole the mooch, etc.
Readers who are unfamiliar with the column should know: the Hey Ladies are all coming from a very specific perspective: that of the relatively affluent white professional in her mid- to late-20s in New York City. For the most part, these young women aren’t struggling to make ends meet. (One or two do mention money troubles–ladies, y’all need to stop letting Ali plan things!–but there are no real stakes to it.)
This book is not a celebration of female friendships in any way. The reader won’t walk away with warm fuzzies about the characters. The ladies are petty and passive-aggressive and all too often lack self-awareness. The humor in the book is made at their expense. While we do get moments of real connection between the characters, more often you’ll find yourself wondering how on earth this group came together. That said, I still had quite a lot of fun with this. It’s a breezy satirical read that doesn’t ask a lot from the reader.
One caveat: if you’re interested in the book, I urge you to buy it in paperback. The digital version appears to be a PDF format, or something that doesn’t allow you to resize the text. That seems an odd choice for the publisher to make. Try a sample of the digital version before you buy just to confirm that you can read the text. I’m definitely getting to that age where I embrace larger font sizes.
They made a book! Those columns were hilarious but also slightly exhausting!
The book is both those things! But also, there’s a surprising amount of pathos in some of the private text messages between the ladies.