The Last Book Party

The Last Book Party by Karen DuKess      Audio Book: 6 hours, 30 mins.     Hardback Book:  256 pages        

Eve Rosen is trying to make her way in life and find herself along the journey.   Bored with her job,  in the shadow of her brilliant brother she is trying to make her place in the world.    As we all do, she encounters a lot of joy, frustration, enamour and disillusionment along the way.   Lucking into a position as assistant to a famous writer she spends the summer of 1987 in Cape Cod.   She also finds love with the writers son and the writer - for a girl searching for excitement she ends up tangled up in way more than she planned for.   The writer's wife is a famous poet and she and he throw their famous book party every year where guests come dressed as literary characters with part of the fun being guessing who everyone is portraying.   As the girl is torn between those who are genuine and those who she cannot understand or chooses not to see for what they really are, the plot thickens.   Friends or allies at least appear with unlikely timing and things revealed serve to bring all she thinks she wants and believes (or decieves herself) to a humiliating end.   Things are never as we glorify them to be and the lesson of doing so is tragic when it smacks us in the face.    An O.K. book.  Would I recomemmend it?   I don't think so.   The reader pretty much knew what was going to happen every where along the way - no surprises.   The writing and dialogue were good but I found this to be a book I could easily put down and pick up again days later.   It didn't hold my interest enough though I kept hoping.

 - Shirley J