Karen Ellis. Earlier work includes USA Today and international bestselling novels Five Days in Summer, One Cold Night, and The Money Kill, the fourth installment of her Karin Schaeffer series which was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She teaches fiction writing at The New School in Manhattan and lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Lief applied the Page 69 Test to Women Like Us with the following results:
When Women Like Us takes the Page 69 Test, we arrive at a relaxed moment with Joni Ackerman letting her guard down and allowing herself to enjoy a simple kindness.Visit Katia Lief's website.
Frank, who she’s just met, owns a film and television post-production company in New York where Joni and her daughter Chris might return to finish the pilot for a TV show they’re making. After visiting several uninspiring facilities in Manhattan, they’re caught off guard by a small Brooklyn-based company’s creative and technical capacity in combination with an unusual coziness and the convenience of its location near their apartment.
Joni surprises herself by feeling attracted to Frank, who is divorced and about her age, at a time when she’s written off the idea of dating. Her instinct is to bolt—but then, on this page, Frank offers his homemade scones and a cup of coffee before they leave.
Everything about the visit feels right, and it terrifies her. She doesn’t really want to return to New York after several years back home in California, and she doesn’t trust the strength of the good impression this man is making on her.
In Invisible Woman, the first in this two-book series, Joni went down the rabbit hole of her anger as her marriage dissolved. By the end, she made a life-changing choice in committing a crime and getting away with it. She left New York and returned to her Los Angeles home where she recovered her balance and a sense of inherent goodness, while weathering the pandemic with her daughter Chris. Now Chris and others at their production company are pressuring them to return to New York where the company has its headquarters
Joni is reluctant and almost wants the visits to post-production facilities to fail so she can head back west. Then she meets Frank and tastes his homemade scone.
As the novel goes on, Joni discovers that she isn’t afraid of Frank as much as she’s afraid of herself. Can she trust herself not to hurt him?
The Page 69 Test: Next Time You See Me.
My Book, The Movie: Next Time You See Me.
The Page 69 Test: Vanishing Girls.
My Book, The Movie: The Money Kill.
The Page 69 Test: Last Night.
Q&A with Katia Lief.
The Page 69 Test: Invisible Woman.
--Marshal Zeringue
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