In this smart, sexy, wickedly funny new novel, the acclaimed author of Right Before Your Eyes introduces an unforgettable and irresistibly real heroine: a woman who is forced to reinvent herself— and discovers that the biggest risk is not taking one at all.

Michaela “Mike” Edwards doesn’t do sugar and spice. But when mishandled office politics get her unexpectedly fired, the young advertising hotshot finds herself doing the unimaginable: moving back in with her widowed father, unraveling her complex feelings for an Aussie journalist named Gunther, and rethinking her entire life. She could never have guessed that fate would land her in a classroom teaching “life skills” to sixth-grade girls who desperately need her. But with a best friend rapidly becoming something more, and a family she’s just discovering, Mike is about to learn that going places in life doesn’t have to mean going it alone.

"Here's a chick lit heroine with beauty and brains — and a bad-ass attitude that lands her in trouble. Out-of-work, out-of-love and out-of-luck, take-no-prisoners ad copywriter Michaela 'Mike' Edwards faces off with a gaggle of giggly 12-year-olds in a 'life skills' class. In a hilarious sendup of new-fashioned home ec, Mike rewrites the curriculum to accommodate information the charter school girls can actually use, and discovers, to her surprise, 'that she cared.' Her reinvention as daughter to her widower father Gerry (who raised her solo) and stepdaughter-to-be of his fiance, Deja, is a lot rockier but no less rollicking. Along the way, ex-boyfriend Jay (whose standup comedy brutally strips away the artifice of their relationship) and Aussie journalist best-pal Gunther help attune Mike to what she's searching for. Shanman's second novel (after Right Before Your Eyes) is a gem of razor-sharp wit and impeccable timing, and though things sag in the blended extended family passages, this is a great anytime read that comes just in time for summer vacation. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Ellen Shanman is a graduate of Northwestern University. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.