Product Description

It's been almost thirteen years since we last saw Cannie Shapiro, the heroine of Good in Bed, whose journey towards happy-ever-after made millions of women the world over laugh, cry and recognise themselves. The last decade of Cannie's life has brought some surprises. Her life story, in fictional form, became an unexpected bestseller, and Cannie has since retreated from fame's fallout, writing science-fiction under a pen name and praying that all her daughter inherited from her father, Cannie's ex-boyfriend Bruce Guberman, are her curls and her eye-colour, and not his predilection for smoking pot. Meanwhile Cannie's best friend, Samantha, is looking for love in all the wrong places, and Cannie's husband, Peter, has decided that he'd like to have a baby, and the family's first choice for a surrogate is none other than Cannie's flamboyant kid sister ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152368 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

About the Author
Jennifer Weiner lives in Philadelphia with her husband, daughter and rat terrier, Wendell. To find out more, visit her website on www.jenniferweiner.com

Customer Reviews

Depressing !!
I am so disapointed with this sequel, "Good In Bed" is without a doubt one of my favourite books ever, one of the most appealing things about Cannie is her fantastic observational humour,but in "Certain Girls" she seems to have developed into one of the most boring wife/mother ever, I appriciate that the story has to be sympathetic to the fact that everyone is now a lot older but I could see no reference to the original Cannie, perhapes this is deliberate to show that people change and grow due to motherhood/age/marriage, but I found it all a little too emotional. I also, as did another reader, find the skipping from Joy to Cannie a bit annoying. There is a particular part of the story towards the end of the book which is so very sad which I will not reveal in case readers of this haven't read the book yet, but, why was it necessary ?? .Perhapes this book would have been better as a "new" book rather than a sequel as for me, Cannie starts and ends with the original "Good In Bed".

engaging readings by two gifted actresses
Mother/daughter relationships are a labyrinth of complexities - loving, angry, close, distant, confiding, secretive. Even more confounding is the fact that all of these feelings may occur within a 24-hour period. We are reminded of this in Jennifer Weiner's witty, insightful novel Certain Girls.

Many fondly remember Cannie Shapiro first introduced to us in Good In Bed. She was then a handmaiden to fashion, and determined to make her mark in the world by writing. Her chosen oeuvre? A tell-all, racy but not real story of her life that flew off the shelves.

It is now thirteen years later. Cannie is out of the spotlight and happily relegated to a question on Jeopardy. She's up to her ears in domesticity, married and planning her daughter Joy's bat mitzvah.

Joy does not share her mother's contentment. After all, she is barely into her teens and navigating the shoals of junior high school. When she discovers her mother's long ago written novel it casts a new and surprising light on who she is.

At the same time Peter throws his husbandly ingredient into the mix by announcing that he'd like to have a baby.

Weiner's prose is as winning as ever and her humor delightfully barbed. Adding luster to the author's words are the engaging readings of two very gifted actresses Michele Pawk and Zoe Kazan.

Tony Award winner Michele Pawk is a seasoned Broadway actress who has also received Drama Desk and Outer Circle Award nominations for her work. Her teaming with Zoe Kazan for this reading is quite a coup as it brings together two major talents.

Daughter of screenwriter Nicholas Kazan and granddaughter of renowned stage and film director Elia Kazan, Zoe Kazan is a multi gifted actress with numerous television and film roles already to her credit. Her voice is aptly suited to the questing, questioning Joy.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

Don't judge a book by it's cover
As some of the other reviewers have commented, the cover for this book is no guide to the contents, the girl on the front is too old to be Joy and too young to be Cannie, and the contents of the book more serious than the laughing girl suggests.

A sequel to the novel "Good In Bed", Certain Girls tells the story of Cannie Shapiro and her daughter Joy in the run up to Joy's bat mitzvah.

Cannie is now a hugely overprotective mother, enough to drive most teenagers potty, writing slush sci fi novels under an assumed name having hated the media attention after the publication of her semi autobiographical novel. Joy, her partially deaf only daughter is a typical teenager - self centred and insecure, obsessed with having the right party and right designer dress for her bat mitzvah and keen to be popular with the in crowd at school at the expense of hurting her true friend.

The book is written partly from Joy's perspective and partly from Cannie's, and like other readers I found it a little confusing at first knowing which chapter was from which perspective. Other writers have used this device to better effect with a more marked difference in writing style between the characters making it obvious who is talking.

The ending is unnecessarily gloomy - it may be a cliche having a happy ending at the finish of a book, but I don't think it was necessary to go to this extreme to avoid one.

I am usually delighted to see a sequel to a novel I have really enjoyed but on balance I could have done without this sequel.