Review: Bicoastal Babe by Cynthia Langston

                          The week continues with my fantastical review of Bicoastal Babe by Cynthia Langston.  I really hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, and don't forget the giveaway coming up at the end of the week where two winners will each receive a copy of Bicoastal Babe.

                            Cynthia Langston is a delight to read.  I admit I was a bit skeptical like all new authors are to me, but Bicoastal Babe was right up my alley. 

                  From the first page, Lindsey Miller calls to me.  She is awkwardly right and she reminds me a lot of well…me in different ways.  And I’m sure Lindsey Miller will touch your heart and make you giggle as you read about her latest guffaw and chuckle as she drives by her ex boyfriend’s house for the millionth time and is caught, and yes Lindsey will make you laugh out loud as she gets booted out of her new apartment by her roommate and is made to wait out in the hallway as the couple on the other side of the door continue to have sex.

                At the opening of Bicoastal Babe, Lindsey Miller has lost her long time boyfriend, and is caught doing a drive by of his house.  Humiliated, she drives home only to be fired from her job the next day.  Depressed, she secludes herself for months in her apartment to the point where it looks like a junkyard of pizza boxes and used Kleenex.  Exasperated, her trio of friends breaks into her apartment when she won’t let them in, never showing an ounce of sympathy, they steamroll her into a job interview for an ad agency.  Her dream job.  Not really trusting that dreams do come true; Lindsey never the less buys a power suit and walks into a fiasco of a career.

                Her new job?  Fashion trend forecaster.  Flying from Los Angeles one week and New York the next, asking random people on the street corner what they like and don’t like about the current fashion trends.  Between figuring out how to succeed in smoozing people and trying to contend with her new roommate who is also her partner in the job, Jen; Lindsey hasn’t got the time for men.  Or does she? 

                First up?  Victor Ragsdale in New York, who she meets in a bar….when she’s drunk. Who says you can't meet Mr. Right in a bar?  Before she knows what hit her, she spends all her time, energy, and thoughts on Victor Ragsdale.  And that leaves no time for work, the very reason she is in New York in the first place.  All is merry in the love department when her week in New York is up and she starts in on her first week in Los Angeles.  But how can she ever leave Victor after just finding him?  But she just can’t lose another job, so she hightails it to the West Coast where she meets love interest #2.

                First off, she meets guy #2 by way of ditching work to lie out in the sun on the Pier in Santa Monica and dream of Victor.  How will she ever concentrate on anything else, much less work when all she can count are the days leading up to when she can see Victor again?

                Victor who?  Danny Wynn is an all American Californian surfer, blond hair, blue eyes, and toned body but when she ends up in the hospital after a surfing lesson she thinks she will never see him again.  But she does.

                What follows is a hilarious sojourn from coast to coast, week after week.  Juggling two guys at the same time as well as trying to be good at her dream job; that’s just hard enough, but when her bussiness partner/roommate is trying to undermine her at every turn; well, a girl could only take so much.

                Oh my God, how I loved this book…but not really the ending until I was told Cynthia was in the process of writing a sequel.  Well, thank God for that.  I need to see who Lindsey eventually chooses, although you get an inkling at the end of Bicoastal Babe, you as a reader are still none too sure.  Anything can happen.     I am willing to bet every girl/woman who reads Bicoastal Babe will be able to identify with at least one of Lindsey’s fiasco’s  in this book

               

     

A Bit about the Author

                

Cynthia Langston was born and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin.

She began her writing career at the age of twelve, with a bi-weekly soap opera called “Yesterday’s Desire.”  Scrawled in a series of tattered red notebooks, YD was passed around the 6th grade class at St. Pius Catholic Gradeschool, where its enormous popularity and demand-for-more inspired Cynthia to make writing a priority.

She continued penning short stories and screenplays throughout high school.  She eventually moved to Chicago to study writing in the prestigious Radio/TV/Film department at Northwestern University, where she also wrote film and theatre reviews for the school’s prize-winning newspaper, The Daily Northwestern.  During her senior year, she received national attention for pioneering one of the first authentic “sex columns,” a weekly he-said/she-said column called “Bungalations.”

After college, Cynthia moved to the New York area, where she continued to write for a wide variety of publications, including a stint as a film critic for Film Journal International.  While in New York, she began a side career in advertising and eventually launched her own successful market research company, Consumer Dig.

In 2001, Cynthia moved herself, her company and her two cats to Los Angeles, where she now lives in the gorgeous Hollywood Hills with her husband and brand new baby boy.

Currently, Cynthia is re-launching Bicoastal Babe to coincide with the development of Katherine Heigl’s “Trending,” a new drama series in development on the CW network (which is based on BB).

Her new novel, “The Very First Bite,” will debut in 2012.