Showing posts with label The Real Housewives of New York City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Real Housewives of New York City. Show all posts

Monday, April 16, 2012

Skinnydipping (Bethenny Frankel)


Bethenny Frankel has, in the past few years, become a one-woman enterprise machine. She started off in the media eye as one of the Real Housewives of New York. Then she left to get her own show, Bethenny Getting Married, which quickly evolved into Bethenny Ever After. Along the way, she has written bestselling self-help books and began the Skinnygirl brand. She has certainly not had the easiest of lives, with lots of family troubles well-documented in her therapy sessions on her TV show. However, she always seems to pick herself up by the bootstraps and dust herself off. Her latest venture, the “fictional” Skinnydipping, hits very close to home and dives right into what we’ve come to expect from Bethenny…too much information.

This is the story of Faith Brightstone (AKA Bethenny Frankel), who leaves college on the day of her graduation to become an actress in Los Angeles. She moves in with her estranged father, a famous horse trainer, and gets a job as a production assistant on a famous TV show. She, of course, then does what every main character does in generic chick lit…goes out drinking every night, sleeps with a multitude of men, finds out that the guy she really likes is married, blah, blah, blah.

Five years later, she is back home, trying desperately to get her muffin business off the ground. She is soon spotted by producers of an upcoming reality show, Domestic Goddess, and is deemed worthy to compete. If she wins, she’ll get a TV show in the Martha Stewart style. The second half of Skinnydipping is all about the drama of filming the show. Will Faith win? Will she find true love? Will she finally get her life together?

Skinnydipping is entertaining and is the perfect book for that beach getaway. The characters, however, are forgettable, and I had to remind myself of the cast of characters practically daily. But Bethenny doesn’t really need to worry, as her fans will follow her no matter what she does.

MY RATING - 3

This review can also be found on www.bookloons.com.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Place of Yes (Bethenny Frankel)


Let me start off by stating that I love, love, love Bethenny Frankel. She is so refreshingly candid, funny, and down-to-earth on her reality shows (The Real Housewives of New York City, Bethenny Getting Married?, and Bethenny Ever After), that I was fully expecting the same from A Place of Yes: 10 Rules for Getting Everything You Want Out of Life. Did I get it? Read on.

Bethenny's life is an open book....natural food chef, businesswoman extraordinaire of Skinnygirl, wife to Jason, mommy to Bryn (the cutest baby I have ever seen) and Cookie the dog (who has her own Twitter feed), and boss to Julie, the assistant, and Gina, the baby nurse. On her show, she even tapes her therapy sessions. A Place of Yes sets up what Bethenny has learned along the way...from an extremely difficult childhood to the very blessed life she has now.

There is nothing new here. Rules like "Find your truth" and "Act on it" have been in every self-help book ever made. She simply illustrates each rule with anecdotes from her own life, making it an autobiography also. Bethenny definitely lives every minute of her life to the fullest; however, her life doesn't really translate well to a book. As much as I advocate reading, one can learn more from Bethenny by watching her than reading this.

MY RATING - 2

This review can also be found on http://www.bookloons.com.