Synopsis:
Dana Barry has nothing against rules. She just thinks they’re meant to be bent, squashed, and thumped into amusing shapes.
It’s no wonder that the struggling twenty-nine-year-old actress gets fired from her day job in retail. Again. Her life is a mess.
But the Shopping Channel is holding auditions for a new on-air host. Relying on her nuclear eye for detail, knack for knowing what makes people tick, and sheer bravado — as well as her best friend, Megan, her newly-appointed manager — she lands the job.
But before you can say office politics, Dana is caught in the biggest drama of her life. Kitty, the network’s star host — a diva who terrorized the entire staff — is found dead in her office by Dana and Lorenzo, the hot sound technician to whom Dana is immediately attracted. But Dana is convinced the prime suspect is innocent. The heat is on, and Dana thinks she’s ready for it . . . until she tangles with the tall, dark, and handsome detective in charge of investigating the case. It’s a complication she doesn’t need as she’s launching her Shopping Channel career while keeping a huge secret that could cause that career to implode.
Dana’s never been afraid to take chances even when a single spark could ignite everything.
It all takes place in New York. Big city, bright lights, big trouble . . .
Review:
Ellen Meister, author of The Other Life, and four other books, was watching a shopping channel and “obsessing on the hosts.” To her the female hosts seemed to be “perfect women . . . pristine in the way they dress, the way they hold themselves, the way they speak, their love of fashion.” She thought it would be interesting to place a character in that job who is just the opposite. From there, she was inspired to have the star host — a real diva — murdered and the new host be the one who has to solve the murder. Although not a mystery writer, Meister felt the magic of the story would be found in crafting characters who all harbor secrets. The delightful Love Sold Separately is the result of Meister’s inspiration.
Dana Barry is “self-sabotaging.” She has had some success as an actress, but as the story opens, she has just been fired from her job in a retail store for being sarcastic with a teen-age customer who returned with his mother to complain about Dana’s commentary. She has to find employment quickly or she will run out of funds to pay the rent on her New York City apartment. Ironically, her father is a respected and wealthy physician who would be happy to pay off her student loans for her, but only after she achieves success on her own. Dana’s stylish sister, Chelsea, is comfortably married, raising a young son, and a compulsive shopper who is a bit judgmental about Dana’s life choices, but always protective of her sister. Their hilarious banter rings true, in no small measure because Meister patterned it after her own two daughters who are “madly in love” but “very sarcastic” with each other.
Dana has just clinched her on-air tryout but not yet signed a contract to serve as the Shopping Channel’s new on-air host when Lorenzo, the sound technician, gives her a tour of the studio. As they savor the New York skyline from the roof of the building, they hear a gunshot. They run back into the office and find Kitty slumped over her desk, dead. Ari Marks, an intensely attractive homicide detective arrives on scene and begins questioning everyone. Dana is immediately protective of Lorenzo, even though she has literally just met him.
After Kitty’s death, her obsessively dedicated Finnish assistant is reassigned to Dana. Like a newly adopted puppy, Ollie clings to Dana but reveals details about Kitty’s life that compel Dana to further her amateur sleuthing in her quest to find Kitty’s murderer.
As Dana’s career as a host takes off, her confidence increases. Because of her attention to detail, she is really good at her job and she finds that she enjoys the work. She realizes that Megan was right to insist that she audition. “She was born for this job. All of her skills and talents — including her ease in front of a camera and the hyperawareness of details she had always taken for granted — coalesced to make her shine.” The hours she spends on-air selling handbags, dresses, and jewelry fly by, and even though it may not be as satisfying as appearing in a play, she does not want to lose her new position and the security it provides. Meeting with Sherry, the stern supervising producer, Dana realizes that she is suddenly “dealing with the kind of grown-up job pressures she had never faced before. Dana always thought of herself as a worker, but her entire career history had consisted of acting gigs, ushering jobs, waitressing stints and insulting teenagers at a mall store. There was a lot of crap to deal with — from terrible obsses to internal politics to utter disasters — but this was different.” Which makes her continued willingness to take risks seemingly incongruous — and she takes a lot of risks, both in her personal life and because of her dogged determination to solve the crime. But old habits die hard and Dana has a distinct propensity to live on the edge. Perhaps that’s because, as Chelsea points out, she thinks she doesn’t deserve success . . . or love.
One of the highlights of the book is Dana’s relationship with her long-time friend, Megan Silvestri, a fellow actor who just one month earlier decided to give up on her own dream. But she offered to become Dana’s manager. Megan believes in Dana’s talent and devotes herself to ensuring that Dana succeeds, sometimes in spite of herself as well as Megan’s best efforts. It is Megan who insists that Dana audition for the Shopping Channel and rushes to her side when things are not going smoothly. And she stands by Dana, even when Dana proves herself to be unworthy of such a stalwart friend. In other words, their relationship is exactly like real friendships between women who fundamentally respect and truly care for each other. Readers will find themselves relating to the bond between Dana and Megan, and cheering for their friendship to survive.
Meister keeps the book’s action moving at a steady pace as Dana’s attempt to manage her attraction to one of the two desirable men in her life leads to hilariously disastrous results. Dana is tenacious and determined to remain true to her authentic self. Meister has created a protagonist who is endearing, relatable, and, at times, maddening. Despite her difficult relationships with her parents, especially her father, her past failures, and her often reckless behavior, Dana retains a strong self-concept that she will not surrender. Readers will find themselves cheering her on as she uncovers clues to the killer’s identity, withstands threats to her own survival at the Shopping Channel, and, despite many obstacles, finds love.
Love Sold Separately offers readers a peek into the world of home shopping and the stressors Dana encounters. Competition for air time, pressure to meet sales quotas, and workplace intrigue are all examined. The depiction of the workplace is credible and believable because Meister researched how home shopping networks operate, and was even granted an eye-opening tour of QVC’s facilities.
With Meister’s eclectic cast of entertaining and surprisingly complex characters, Love Sold Separately doesn’t fit neatly into a particular niche. At its core, the story features the mystery surrounding Kitty’s demise, but Meister injects the tale with snappy, believable, and frequently funny dialogue, as well as romance, and it all revolves around the multi-layered, empathetic, and adorably lovable Dana. It is a coming-of-age tale about Dana becoming empowered, gaining confidence, and achieving her goals in the world of grown-ups.
Love Sold Separately is a cleverly plotted, entertaining escape, complete with plot twists and a shocking ending that readers will never be able to guess. Best of all, Meister has more installments planned.
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