Going La La - Softcover

Potter has written a classic romance that manages to twist and turn to leave the reader guessing at Frankie's happiness until the very end and has created in her hero and heroine two believable and yet off-kilter characters. Reilly, the love interest, appears as both the uncouth, cowboy-hat-wearing American of stereotype and yet also as the charming gentleman who has experienced pain and needs some love. Frankie, though she has a worrying tendency to relate all her LA experiences to the last two years of her life, (house parties are only comparable to those she went to with her ex-boyfriend, the smarmy Hugh, which feels unrealistic for a 29-year-old, but is perhaps symptomatic of her misguided devotion to her ex), is a sympathetic character and yet beautiful and flighty enough to be the star of her own story.

Going La La offers a dream away from everyday life, where men are Cary-Grant-cum-Marlboro man lookalikes and women are allowed to be swept off their kitten-heeled feet (while also becoming leather-trouser-wearing independent sex-bombs). Frankie rejects drab and oh-so-British-London and her equally drab and oh-so-British boyfriend, embracing sunny Los Angeles and Reilly with his "long, lazy smile"--something we'd all like to do, at least for one day, as we read this and smile on a cold, rainy Sunday morning. --Olivia Dickinson