The Dinner Party

The Dinner Party

Sometime back in seventh grade, Lainie and Miya pinky swore to attend the same college, snag gorgeous husbands, and live next door to one another for the rest of their lives. But is post-grad life ever what one imagines?<br /> <br />Lainie Silver is twenty-eight, attractive, razor-sharp, and is nonetheless trapped in a mind-numbing job and a romantic slump. Sure, she’s thankful for a steady paycheck, a Fifth Avenue address, and minimal sagging of tenuous body parts. But it doesn’t seem fair that Miya managed to wangle a glamorous career as a celebrity make-up artist and a “perfect” marriage to Jake, a chef at The Union Square Café. Both are unbearable reminders of the novel Lainie can’t seem to write and the elusive love she craves. After hosting a tense dinner party (and throwing back one too many cocktails), Lainie succumbs to bitterness and bad judgment when Jake shows up at her apartment. Though Lainie can’t stand him, this minor detail doesn’t matter in the drunken haze of seduction. Eight minutes later, after mediocre sex and a hard look at the philanderer passed out on her couch, Lainie knows that her friendship—potentially her entire life—will never be the same.<br /><br />Determined to keep her secret, with guilty angst and acerbic wit as her must-have accessories, Lainie tries to resume so-called normalcy. This proves more difficult than she thought: she gets fired for taking too long a lunch, settles into the comfort of a boring relationship only to be cheated on when she least expects it, has a fender bender with her first love on the Long Island Expressway, and realizes she is wildly attracted to her new boss, Noah. <br /><br />Against the warnings of Miya and her nagging mother, Lainie nestles in to Noah’s world of custom suits and imported cars. She even lets him in on her one-night stand with Jake. She never (ok—hardly) suspects he could one day be the cause of all their undoing...