Selected by Library Journal as one of the year’s best books “Charming…There’s a genuine wit at work here, and a pragmatism that seems especially wry…The Big Love has a worried, wisecracking voice like that of Woody Allen’s prime romantic comedies.” “Sarah Dunn moves between froth and depth, making her debut light enough for the beach but heavy enough to keep you thinking on the plane ride home.” “Pitch-perfect and utterly charming…An ideal summer read – it should come with a hammock.” “A summer must-read…In this hilarious beach read that’s part Woody Allen-neurotic, part Sex and the City-sex-obsessed, we watch as Alison Hopkins, a Philadelphia columnist, bounces from guy to guy, trying to figure out how her love life became such a mess…Dunn’s witty, eerily realistic peek inside Hopkin’s head will cause any woman – or man – who’s been subjected to the dating scene to laugh knowingly.” “A huge breath of fresh air delivered via witty prose…Thanks to Dunn’s snappy dialogue and quirky characters, The Big Love is a cut above the legions of books about single women in search of a few good men.” “Unapologetic chick lit…Alison is ruthlessly smart, terribly funny, and totally neurotic…The Big Love is a perfect sugary confection, with a surprising center of wistful wisdom…It’s like a highlights reel from Sex and the City. It’s that funny.” “A sweet-spirited first novel…The Big Love is about more than breaking up and moving on. Raised in an ultraconservative, uberevangelical Christian family, Alison fears that Tom’s departure is God’s way of judging her for premarital cohabitation…With this twist, Dunn elevates the novel from the predictable, with insightful exploration of a woman examining her faith.” “Alison Hopkins is a sweetly funny, sometimes strident, and nearly always neurotic gal who just wants her own sliver of the American dream before the batteries go dead in her biological clock. The writing is fresh, the characters are just quirky enough without ever verging on cloying, and the ending – not to give it away – is hardly the happily-ever-after, misty-eyed Cinderella fable we’ve come to expect from those disposable Bridget Jones knockoffs…The Big Love is for keeps.” “This could have easily been garden-variety chick lit, but Dunn’s brand of bone-dry, self-conscious humor transcends the confines of the genre.” “Dunn’s book transcends typical chick-lit fare by digging a bit deeper into Alison’s subconscious…These are the sections of the book that are quite original in tone and subject matter; they’re a little startling in their honesty about a young woman struggling with her past and present ideas about faith, love, and sex.” “This Philadelphia tale of girlie woe transcends its genre with 3D characters and empathy.” “In what might be the first installment of a new literary genre – neurotic Christian chick lit – Dunn hilariously chronicles the boyfriend trouble and sexual hang-ups of Alison, a thirty-two-year-old Center City-dwelling columnist who just happens to have been raised as a born-again Christian – just like Sarah Dunn. It reads like a Nora Ephron novel might, if Nora Ephron had, by the time she was thirty-two, slept with a grand total of two people, one of whom was gay.” “A tasty soufflé of a novel…Religious angst might not seem to mesh with romantic dilemmas, but Dunn makes it work.” “Delightful…A surprising, touching, and hilariously deadpan debut novel.” “Alison’s engaging voice carries this thoughtful, introspective, smart novel along and raises it far above the average novel about a young woman looking for love in the big city.” “Dunn ably succeeds in making Alison a charming, engaging, amiable wreck of a narrator…You never stop pulling for her.” “It’s fast, smart, and addictive. Give us more!” “Sweetly neurotic and utterly believable, Alison charms with her emotional clumsiness and blushing sexual honesty.” |