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Everything Nice

Everything Nice by Ellan Shanman

Mike Edwards is tough for a girl. Actually, she's tough for a guy, at least that's what her ex-boyfriend said when he left their shared apartment last year. Post-break-up, Mike's only friend is her good buddy Gunther, an Australian news reporter stationed in New York City. She's never had women friends, and she's mainly interested in men for quick flings, nothing serious. In fact, the less emotionally involved she can be with the world, the better.

Work was going great, until it wasn't. Mike knows she's a good writer, but when her mentor gets fired, Mike is asked to leave the ad agency and she quickly finds that she can't get hired again - anywhere. Her reputation - as icy, unfriendly and argumentative - precedes her. At 30, Mike is moving back in with her father, who has unexpectedly started dating after being a widow for 25 years. She is trying to avoid confronting some big issues from childhood, avoid her dad's new girlfriend, avoid her changing relationship with Gunther, and avoid getting a new job since no one wants her anyway. Her life has completely fallen apart.

Just when things couldn't get any worse, she gets talked into substitute teaching in a "Life Skills" class at a private girls school. A room full of seventh graders is not what Mike needed to get her life back on track. With embroidery and baking on the syllabus, Mike is even more clueless than her students. Mike knows nothing of sugar, spice and everything nice, because that's not what this woman is made of!

I loved this book. With the cute girls school cover art, I was expecting something totally different, but Mike's gruff, tough, almost bitter personality really grew on me as I read her story. It was inevitable that she would change and grow as a character, because she is really miserable early on in the story, but her journey from sarcastic, cruel and blunt to...something nicer...was a great read!