CRITICAL PRAISE FOR SLIGHTLY SETTLED
âReaders who followed Traceyâs struggles in Slightly Single, and those meeting her for the first time, will sympathize with this singletonâs post-breakup attempts to move on in this fun, lighthearted romp with a lovable heroine.â
âBooklist
âTracey is insecure and has many neuroses, but this makes her realisticâ¦. And like many women, Tracey needs to figure out when to listen to her friends and when to listen to herself.â
âRomantic Times
CRITICAL PRAISE FOR SLIGHTLY SINGLE
ââ¦an undeniably fun journey for the reader.â
âBooklist
âBridget Jonesyâ¦Tracey Spadolini smokes, drinks and eats too much, and frets about her romantic life.â
âPublishers Weekly
is a pseudonym for New York Times bestselling, award-winning novelist Wendy Corsi Staub, who has written more than fifty fiction and nonfiction books for adults and teenagers in various genresâamong them contemporary and historical romance, suspense, mystery, television and movie tie-in and biography. She has coauthored a hardcover mystery series with former New York City mayor Ed Koch and has ghostwritten books for various well-known personalities. A small-town girl at heart, she was born and raised in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie and in the heart of the notorious snow belt. By third grade, her heart was set on becoming a published author; a few years later, a school trip to Manhattan convinced her that she had to live there someday. At twenty-one, she moved alone to New York City and worked as an office temp, freelance copywriter, advertising account coordinator and book editor before selling her first novel, which went on to win a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award. She has since received numerous positive reviews and achieved bestseller status, most notably for the psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Her previous Red Dress Ink title, Slightly Single, was one of Waldenbooksâ Best Books of 2002. Very happily married with two children, Wendy writes full-time and lives in a cozy old house in suburban New York, proving that childhood dreams really can come true.
Dedicated with love and friendship to the Siegel family,
Joan, Richard, Rory and Nicholas, and to the three guys I adore: Mark, Morgan and Brody.
With special gratitude to the brilliant David Staub
of Network Expert Software Systems.
The present
So in case youâve been wondering, I married Mike after all.
Which Mike, you might ask?
And rightly so.
For a while there, it was a toss-up. But when I finally made my choice, I honestly believed it was the right oneâthat Iâd chosen the right Mike.
Only recently have I begun to question thatâ¦and everything else in my life. Only recently have I been thinking back to that summer when I found myself torn between the guy Iâd always loved and the guy Iâd just met.
That they shared both a name and my heart is one of lifeâs great ironies, donât you think?
Then again, maybe not. According to the United States Social Security Administration, Michael was the most popular boysâ name in America between 1964 and 1998. Odds are, if youâre a heterosexual female who was born between those yearsâas I amâyouâre going to date a couple of Mikes in your life. As I did.
Meanwhile, if youâre a heterosexual male who was born in those years, youâre going to date a couple of Lisas. That was the most popular girlsâ name the year I was born.
Iâm not Lisa.
Remember that song? All about how she wasnât Lisa, her name was Julie. It was a big hit when I was a kid. I remember singing it at slumber parties with my best friendsâtwo of whom were named Lisa.
But Iâm not Lisa. Iâm not Julie, either.
My real name is Barbra. Spelled without the extra âa,â like Barbra Streisandâs. Thatâs not why mine is spelled that way; I was born back in the mid-sixties, before my mother ever heard of Barbra Streisand.
My fatherâwho if his own name werenât Bob probably wouldnât be able to spell thatâfilled out the birth certificate while my mother was sleeping off the drugs they used to give women to spare them the horrific childbirth experience.
That, of course, was back in the Bad Old Days when they didnât realize that the fetus was being drugged as wellâotherwise known as the Good Old Days, when nobody was the wiser and nobody was feeling any pain.