Review: Pink Slip Party by Cara Lockwood

Jane is having an incredibly bad day losing both her job and her boyfriend on the same day. It is even more undignified that her boss is actually a company VP for the office products company firing her and had personally signed off on her termination. The resumes that Jane sends out throughout the story are the most entertaining bit as she's quite creative and unafraid of stretching the truth. But she is only half-heartedly invested in finding a new job. Really she's more focused on figuring out how to borrow money to stay in her apartment, avoiding her successful and fairly know-it-all overbearing older brother's condemnation of her life, and keeping her slacker ex-boyfriend out of her life.

Jane's father loses his job and her mother gets a job, despite his 1950's attitude towards wives working. So while Jane is trying to play mediator between her parents, she invites a woman, also fired from Jane's company to move in with her and share the rent. Inviting Missy into the mix will send everything spiralling out of control as Missy plots to get back at the company, taking Jane and another former co-worker along for the ride. When things go horribly pear-shaped, Jane will turn to Kyle, her brother's cute best friend, for help.

Lockwood tosses many balls in the air with this novel and because they are lighter than air, she manages to keep juggling them. She has multiple plot lines twirling past each other at all times. Her characters are frequently not as fleshed out as the reader might like, perhaps because there are so many of them, all of whom are fairly significant to the story. But Jane does start to grow up and act her 28 years, instead of coming across, as she did in the beginning, as a college-aged woman incapable of facing her own life.

Overall, this was a fun, frothy read. Watching as the characters plan their caper was entertaining and a good way to spend an afternoon. Ultimately the plot and the characters weren't terribly memorable and the writing, while competent, doesn't sing so this is recommended for those who enjoy a bit of chick lit fluff or who want a generally cheery, but potentially forgettable read.