Summary:
A refreshingly honest, laugh-out-loud novel about losing the life you always wanted…and finding the life you were meant to have.
For the last ten years, Agnes Parsons’s biggest challenge has been juggling yoga classes and lunch dates. Her Santa Monica house staff takes care of everything, leaving Agnes to focus on her trophy-wife responsibilities: look perfect, adore her older husband, and wear terribly expensive (if uncomfortable) underwear.
When her husband disappears, leaving Agnes and their infant daughter with no money, no home, and no staff, she is forced to move across the country, where she lands a job teaching at an all-boys boarding school in the Bronx. So long, organic quinoa bowls and sunshine-filled California life. Hello, processed food, pest-infested house, and twelve-year-old-boy humor—all day, every day.
But it’s in this place of second chances (and giant bugs), where Agnes is unexpectedly forced to take care of herself and her daughter, where she finds out the kind of woman she can be. Ultimately, she has to decide if she prefers the woman and mother she has become…or the trophy life she left behind.
Authentic and sharply witty, Trophy Life is proof that granny panties and mom coats might not be the answer to everything; they’re simply comfortable (if slightly unattractive) reminders of what happens when one life ends…and real life begins.
Review:
Lea Geller’s debut novel is aces! I have no doubt that women everywhere are going to love this book. The heroine Agnes “Aggie” Parsons is 110% one of my favorite fictional characters to come along in a long time. She was beyond likable for so many reasons. She is presented with losing it all and having to fight back and you cannot help but cheer for her the whole way through.
Agnes’s husband Jack disappears one day and his closest friend, “Don” tells her not to call the police. Her husband is in real trouble and he just needs time to fix it, and there is a plan she just needs to stay away from him for the time being.
The next day she is told to move to New York; all the way from the comforts of her plush home in sunny Santa Monica, to go teach English at a boarding school for boys. Mind you, it has housing and day care for their 6-month-old daughter, Grace. She is to get across the country by driving a used beat up car, because her fancy car is now gone. There will be no nanny, no housekeeper, no lovely home on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific anymore for Agnes. Most importantly, there will be no husband to look out for her. Agnes will only have herself to count on.
Will she be able to fend for herself in this whole new world in the Bronx, New York?
This is a fantastically written tale! I went in to this story thinking I was reading a chick lit book, but there is a deeper story going on at the boarding school that I found so intriguing.
I wasn’t just rooting for Agnes; I was rooting for her students, as well.
For a read that you will absolutely fall in love with, I highly recommend “Trophy Life”!
I know that Lea Geller made it on to my favorite author hot list! I’m anxiously awaiting her next novel!
5 Stars. (too bad I cannot give more)
I would like to thank the publishers for sending me an ARC of this Novel via NetGalley.
The Write Review 