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    The Manny
    The Manny
    The Manny
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Manny

    Written by Holly Peterson

    Narrated by Karen Ziemba

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    What's a Park Avenue working mom to do when her troubled son desperately needs a male role model? If she's like the gutsy heroine of Holly Peterson's astute new comedy of manners, she does what every other woman on the block does. She hires a manny.

    A middle-class girl from Middle America, Jamie Whitfield isn't ""one of them"" but she lives in ""the Grid,"" the wealthiest acre of real estate in Manhattan. And she has most everything they have—a sprawling, new apartment, full-time help, as well as her very own detached attorney husband. What she doesn't have, is a full-time father figure for their struggling nine-year-old son, Dylan. Enter The Manny. At first the idea of paying a man to provide a role model for Dylan sounds crazy. But Peter Bailey is calm, cool, competent and so charmingly down-to-earth, he's irresistible. And with her career as a news producer in overdrive, and her husband locked in his study, Jamie is in serious need of some grounding. But will the new manny in her life put the ground back beneath her feet, or sweep her off them?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJun 19, 2007
    ISBN9780061473371
    The Manny
    Author

    Holly Peterson

    Holly Peterson is the author the May 2017 social satire fiction release, It Happens in the Hamptons. In 2016, she curated an outdoor cooking book, Assouline's Smoke and Fire: Recipes and Menus for Outdoor Entertaining. In 2014, she published The Idea of Him and of the New York Times bestseller The Manny in 2007.  She was a Contributing Editor for Newsweek, an Editor-at-Large for Talk magazine and an Emmy Award-winning Producer for ABC News, where she spent more than a decade covering everthing from trials of the century to global politics. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, Town and Country, The Daily Beast, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle Decor, Departures and numerous other publications.

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    Reviews for The Manny

    3/5

    97 ratings8 reviews

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    • 1/5
      This book ends reading by browsing the library shelves. Back from vacation, with nothing to read, I picked this up. This is my greatest regret. I'll never be able to get the hours back that I spent with this book. After finishing, I read a number of reviews on line which sum up all that's wrong with this book (and it's 1MM advance!). Let me just share my ONE problem with this books inconsistencies.



      Halfway through the book, two of the characters are in an SUV traveling to Long Island. Only when they're in LI, contemplating their navels do we learn the main character has a dog. A dog, she says that craves attention. In a novel, primarily about domestic relationships, you'd think this attention hogging dog would have come up sooner. Or during the drive when the characters are distracted by each other and crazy traffic - the attention hogging dog would have come up. But no. So, Plot Device Dog runs along the beach, and gets dirty. So, as a dog owner, I'm looking for this dog to appear again - after all I do like well written descriptions of people and their relationships to their dogs. But nope. It disappears along with any notion that I hadn't wasted my time on this.
    • 4/5
      On the surface, Jamie Whitfield has it all: a thriving career as a serious broadcast news producer, a multimillionaire husband, three adorable children, and full cast of household help. What she doesn't have is a full-time father for her children or an attentive husband.

      What's a desperate woman to do? Hire a man. Not any man, but a male nanny.

      I enjoyed this voyeuristic journey into the 0.001% of Manhattan's richest families on the Grid. But I didn't give the book 5 stars, because I wasn't particularly fond of Jamie at first. She rubbed me the wrong way a few times, but overall, the author portrayed her as realistically as possible, especially her indecisiveness on whether or not to leave her power marriage.

    • 2/5
      1.5 starsTrite chick lit. Weathly over-extended Mom living in Manhattan with power-hungry attorney husband, hires a "ski bum" to provide male role model for 9-year-old son who is over anxious. I didn't quite finish because it was due at the library and just too ridiculous to renew.
    • 4/5
      I felt like this book was uneven - like the author wasn't sure what she wanted this story to be. At times it felt like a romance novel where every scene is about sex and sexual tension. And then at other times it felt like more like a serious story about a failing marriage and excessive consumerism. Overall the storyline was good, but the tone of the novel just never hit the right note for me. I did like the author interview at the end of the audio version I listened to.
    • 4/5
      You tell a story about rich Manhattanites, I'm there. In this one, a high-powered news producer thinks her son needs more male guidance (husband is distracted with his own career) and hires a "manny" who happens to be gorgeous, sensitive, and about to take off with his own high-tech company. You can guess what happens. Pretty good. I had the U.K. edition, so the language was almost quaint.
    • 3/5
      Fun, well-written book about Jamie, a middle-class Midwesterner now living in New York with the very, very rich and not really fitting in. When her 9-year-old Dylan begins to have "issues" because his high-powered lawyer father is never home and doesn't do anything with him even when he is home, Jamie hires Peter, a 28-year-old software developer who needs the money, as a manny (male nanny) to do things with Dylan and help him with the issues. Then life gets even crazier. Definitely in the chick-lit category but a good book if you're looking for something light ro read.
    • 4/5
      The Manny by Holly Peterson is the story of Jamie Whitfield, a working mother who is trying to navigate life through high society in New York City, while balancing a needy husband, 3 kids and a demanding job in the television industry. Jamie's husband, Phillip, works long hours and rarely spends time with their children, who are beginning to suffer for make attention, especially Dylan, Jamie's oldest son. Enter Peter, a male nanny, who is able to give the children a male role model and the father figure they crave. Jamie finds herself unhappy in her marriage and soon looks to Peter to fulfill her own needs as well. This book was a really easy, enjoyable read. I identified with Jamie's feelings as a mother and found myself pulling for her. The story was quick and all of the characters were believable. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to read chick lit or mommy lit and is looking for a fun read. 4 stars.
    • 3/5
      I'm not digging it. I had difficulty getting on with the book. I had to start again three times because I lost interest in it quite quickly and would rather read some other book. I eventually steeled myself enough to read it right to the end.For one, the writing was rather juvenile. It reminded me of poorly written fanfiction. I've read better written novels by amateurs compared to this! The sentence structure was atrocious, especially at the beginning of this book. There were parts that I had to reread because of the roundabout way it was written.Secondly, the beginning part of the story was such a bore. It started to pick up when the Manny enter the scene more though. That happened closer towards the end of the book. And then, it died. Abruptly. The book has its funny moments, but its far in between.Thirdly, I don't like the main character, Jamie Whitfield. I think her characterisation is a bit fucked up. She's told to be an accomplished part-time producer of a prime time news program. There was also a part in that book that painted her as some one with spunk. But she's not; she's weak and clueless.She let herself be stuck with a racist, whiny and impossible husband for 10 years! And the way she babied her eldest son Dylan? Ugh, so nauseating. She's so superficial, as in she doesn't like the group of people she's acquainted with, and yet she's all kissy-kissy with them.Fourthly, the ending sucks. Major. It was neither here nor there. I think it would be best for the author to consider writing an epilogue to tie up the loose ends. The ending was left hanging. When I reached the end, I went, 'Is that it? Wtf?'. It was really a let down.