Jen Lancaster was living the sweet life — until real life kicked her to the curb.

She had the perfect man, the perfect job — hell, she had the perfect life — and there was no reason to think it wouldn't last. Or maybe there was, but Jen Lancaster was too busy being manicured, pedicured, highlighted, and generally adored to notice.

This is the smart-mouthed, soul-searching story of a woman trying to figure out what happens next when she's gone from six figures to unemployment checks and she stops to reconsider some of the less-than-rosy attitudes and values she thought she'd never have to answer for when times were good.

Filled with caustic wit and unusual insight, it's a rollicking read as speedy and unpredictable as the trajectory of a burst balloon.

"It doesn't take Lancaster long to live up to her lengthy subtitle ('Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office'): in just one chapter, she gloats over cheating a homeless man, is rude to a waitress and passes judgment on all of her co-workers (including her 'whore' best friend). She's almost gleeful about lacking 'the internal firewall that keeps us from saying almost everything we think,' but she doesn't come off as straightforward, just malicious. (Of course, it's possible she's making up much of her dialogue, which is a little too clever to be believable.) Lancaster expects sympathy for her downward slide after getting fired from her high-paying finance job in the post-9/11 recession, and chick lit fans may be entertained watching life imitate fiction, but just when you start to feel sorry for her, the snotty attitude returns. In later chapters, Lancaster increasingly relies on entries from her blog (www.jennsylvania. com) and caustic replies to criticisms, and though things start looking up — her husband finds a job, she lands a book deal — it's not clear that she's been as chastised by her experiences as she claims." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Carrie Bradshaw meets Barbara Ehrenreich in this memoir about white-collar unemployment after the dot-com bubble burst....Alternately appalling, aggravating and amusing." Kirkus Reviews

From a popular blogger comes a hilarious memoir that takes readers from sorority house to penthouse to poorhouse.

Jen Lancaster, a former associate vice president at an investment research firm, is now the proprietor of the popular blog jennsylvania.com.