Sparkle Life — Kara Lindstrom

Wholly contemporary and compulsively readable, this sparkling debut is a finely honed tale of sex, love, and making movies that is sure to appeal to fans of Nick Hornby and Melissa Bank.

Sparkle Life is about the movie business, sex, globalization, and real estate as told through the lives of three women in their 30s -- Liv, Joy, and Sara. Liv is rich, talented, and promiscuous, tremendously attached to the men who raised her: her father, a very religious clothing manufacturer and her uncle, a Park Avenue psychiatrist. Joy makes lists: be a producer, married, and rich. Sara is extraordinarily observant, seeing details and identifying patterns, including her own inability to explain what the patterns mean.

Kara Lindstrom masterfully portrays a world where glitz, ambition, and sex are exposed to the seams. Yet, when her characters catch themselves in the compromises they live by, this racy tale is transformed into an incisive meditation on the challenges of everyday life.