Appetites

Book review of “Appetites”

“Appetites” by Karen Frankola

Book Description:

When Sarah suddenly hears from Harry, the Brit she almost married twenty years ago, she decides now is the time to change her life. Sarah has a great job in Manhattan, but she considers herself too fat to have a boyfriend. Harry is visiting New York in four months and she wants to turn back into the girl he fell in love with. Since she can never stick to a diet, she comes up with a drastic solution.

Sarah asks her sister Max to lock her up in her basement and feed her nothing but healthy meals. Max, a struggling waitress, agrees begrudgingly. She’s skinny, but has her own set of appetites—for drink, drugs, and great-looking losers.

Sarah thinks a summer in Max’s basement will give her a new body, a chance to reconnect with Harry, and the friendship she’s long craved from her sister. But things quickly go wrong. Max’s drinking leads her to neglect Sarah, who figures out how to get out of the basement. Sarah develops an obsession with Max’s boyfriend and manages to fulfill a sexual fantasy by pretending to be something she’s not.

Can Sarah turn back time with Harry or will she and Max kill each other first? Can either sister ever learn to say no?

My Review:

The first thing that caught my eye about this book was the cover, it’s gorgeous!  After reading a blurb of “Appetites,” I was hooked.  I was curious as to how Sarah’s plan would work and how far she would go to be at the weight she wanted.

Once I started this book, I didn’t want to stop.  The characters stand for themselves.  As sisters they’re very different, but in some ways, I found them to be similar.  There were times when I would be fighting for Sarah to stick it to her sister and flee the basement for good, but I liked her determination.  Max’s character was very well written.  For someone who thinks she’s tough, I thought she was a softy who desperately wanted to be more like Sarah.

Parts of the book I was laughing-out-loud, then in others, I was teary-eyed because it’s obvious that Sarah and Max really care for each other, they’re just stubborn.

“Appetites” was a wonder book and highly recommend it as a beach read.

I give this book 4 stars!

**About Karen Frankola:  Karen Frankola wrote Appetites to explore the hard choices women make in love and work. Karen spent much of her career writing very short stories at news organizations like CNN and MSNBC, so creating a novel was challenging. She now does a variety of writing for corporations and nonprofit organizations. Karen is lucky enough to work mostly from home, with her dog Rascal curled up under her desk.

Karen grew up near Pittsburgh, where she spent much of her childhood reading books in the cemetery that bordered her family’s backyard.  Karen moved to nine different states and England.  Some of her favorite jobs were teaching journalism at the University of Missouri, working as a television news director, and handling video shoots for Deloitte around the world.  She also spent a summer repairing motors at a steel mill and hopes to soon publish a coming-of-age memoir about that experience.

Karen and her husband Troy now reside  in Durham, North Carolina, where they enjoy watching deer in the woods behind their house, lots of live music, beautiful biking trails, and great neighbors.

Karen is working on a sequel to Appetites and would love to hear what you think of it.

**Contact Karen:  Amazon Author Page   Twitter

**Buy “Appetites” on Amazon

**Click HERE to check out other stops on Karen’s Chick Lit Plus Blog Tour!