Ms. Demeanor by Elinor Lipman

Ms. Demeanor by Elinor Lipman
on December 27, 2022
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / General, Fiction / Romance / New Adult
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
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Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm–or was, until a prudish neighbor, binoculars poised, observes her having sex on the roof of her NYC apartment building. Police are summoned, and a punishing judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, trapped at home, life looks bleak. Yes, her twin sister provides support and advice, but mostly of the unwelcome kind. When a doorman lets slip that Jane isn’t the only resident wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to life within her apartment walls, she discovers she hasn’t heard the end of that tattletale neighbor–whose past isn’t as decorous as her 9-1-1 snitching would suggest. 

It started out promising. A lawyer is sentenced to house arrest for public indecency after having sex on her apartment’s roof. She is fired and the junior attorney she was with gets a slap on the wrist. Jane has a very unapologetic attitude that I appreciated. And she is irate about the old peeping-Tom bitty who got her arrested. And she decides to make the most of things by doing a TikTok cooking series based on a cookbook of recipes from the 1800s and catering for another apartment-mate who is also on house arrest.

This could have been cute had the author just run with the above. But….

There are funny parts to this book but it gets confusing and unfocused. There’s a murder. Jane is a suspect for a minute. I don’t know what happened with that. There’s a Polish guy looking for a green card wife. Jane’s makes a friend who morphs from a sophisticated dentist into a sex-crazed pathetic woman taken in by a con-artist. And then there’s the romance, which is one of the most unromantic romances I’ve ever read.

I just didn’t get this book. Therefore, I rated this two stars.