Every Girl Needs Her Signature Color . . .

Jailbait. Mystic Jukebox. Ass-Slapping Pink. Say Hello (and Wave Good-bye). Born to Run. These are some of the lipsticks offered by Grrrl cosmetics, colors that every hip young woman in the city just has to have. Sadie, a twenty-something Brit living in New York City, has the enviable job of creating these catchy names—and she’s good at it. What Sadie really wants, however, is to find the perfect moniker for Grrrl’s signature color, a color that will be loved by generations of women. A color name like Revlon’s famous Cherries in the Snow.

Sadie’s own lip color changes with her mood: pink when she’s feeling girlish, orangey brown when she’s feeling sentimental, none at all when she’s in love, and traffic-stopping red, painted in a perfect bow, when she’s ready to end a relationship. In addition to her love of lipsticks, Sadie also has a penchant for much older men—none of whom ever measure up to her father and none she ever wants to stick around that long.

Enter Marley, a mysterious organic-food-eating, yoga-practicing graffiti artist close to her own age, who shows up in the Grrrl office one snowy day. . . . Sadie falls hard, and so does he. But Marley isn’t just devoted to Sadie; he also has a daughter, Montana, a precocious, possessive little girl who competes with Sadie for her daddy’s affections. This bizarre triangle is at the heart of Cherries in the Snow—a witty and sometimes dark saga of sex, the city, and the search for love . . . and the perfect red lipstick—from one of today’s most daring writers of fiction.

"Sadie Steinberg needs a makeover — a life makeover. While the 24-year-old British heroine of Forrest's unsurprising third novel has a knack for naming cosmetics (Sophisticated Inebriate, Sexy Rabbi, Jet Lag) at her friends' trendy New York makeup company, Grrrl, she can't seem to remember the name of her favorite fruit (is it a mango or a papaya?), get started on the Great American Novel she's been meaning to write or stop falling for older men who resemble her dad. When Sadie finally does meet the right guy — a former graffiti artist turned yoga-practicing corporate art consultant — she nearly loses him by trying to out — temper tantrum his eight-year-old daughter. Hijinks involving soy milk, a tutu, plastic surgery, a cat named Sidney Katz, trips to Los Angeles, and, of course, face paint, ensue, and the narrative meanders toward a conventional denouement. Taking her title from a shade of lipstick by Revlon, Forrest (Namedropper) jazzes up her edgier version of chick lit with clever sleaze (an ex-lover has a 'genius penis'), though most of the pop-culture references have the shelf life of the latest eye shadow. Like Sadie's beloved Ding Dongs, the novel is low in nutritional value, but readers who've dreamed of being the 'model New York City single girl' will eat it up regardless." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

This witty, wise novel is the tale of Sadie, a young woman with a serious penchant for older men--who finally grows up once she takes the girliest of jobs--naming colors at a makeup company.

Emma Forrest is a novelist and screenwriter. She is the author of Namedropper and Thin Skin and lives in New York City.