Never Too Real

April 15, 2016
Friendship steadies four powerful women, all seeking to support each other through personal and professional trials. Television personality and advice columnist Rita's debut novel reads a bit like a multicultural edition of Sex and the City. The four friends, all gorgeous, sassy, and independent, anchor Latina culture in multiple ethnicities: Mexican-American, Venezuelan-American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican-African-American. Each chapter is chock full of enough twists to be an episode, but so much activity leads to a fair amount of burdensome exposition and some awkwardly integrated ("It was six years earlier...") back stories. One of the few Latinas to grace the small screen, Cat has just been released from her contract, a casualty, in part, of network executives thinking Hispanic equals bilingual. But instead of feeling devastated, Cat has a strange joy bubbling up through her body. Losing her job may be the best thing that's ever happened to her. The head of her own culturally diverse venture capital company, Magda suffers no fools in her ambitious, aggressive life. Yet when she came out as lesbian years ago, it created fissures in her family that may now be breaking into pieces. Luz, an advertising executive married to a perfect, supportive Chinese-American husband, balances her career and life with her adorable twin girls and toddler son. A surprise from her parents' past, however, may upset not only her stable family life, but also her own sense of identity. Luckily, the fourth girlfriend, Gabi, is a therapist who helps shift each woman's perspective from seeing a crisis to seeing an opportunity, no matter the curveball. She may, of course, be missing a few clues in her own life that point toward marital disaster. Brimming with smart dialogue and ricocheting plot twists, Rita's potentially cliched tale is actually ripe for a screenplay. Just in time for a beach read--or a guilty pleasure in a deserted boardroom.

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June 1, 2016

In her debut novel, Rita explores the lives of four seemingly successful women, friends who are all second-generation Latinas from a variety of backgrounds. Introduced in quick succession are Cat, a television personality; Magda, a venture capitalist who is also a lesbian; Gabi, a married therapist; and Luz, who hails from an upper-class family and appears to have it all. Though they are perceived as having made it, each of the women struggle, and they'll have to rely on their own strengths and those of their friends in order to come through. A lot of characters and plots are introduced in the book's first section, which creates a bit of a reading challenge, even if a necessary one. Once the author establishes her characters and their difficulties, each protagonist becomes more developed and holds her own as a compelling individual. VERDICT Fans of workplace chick lit will find a lot to like in this first novel.--Jane Jorgenson, Madison P.L., WI

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