Best Staged Plans. Finished 9-16-16, 2.5/5 stars, fiction, pub. 2011

Sandy Sullivan is a professional home stager who lives and works in the Boston suburbs. So getting rid of her own house and downsizing should be a breeze, right?

Well, best staged plans and all, Sandy’s husband, Greg, is dragging his feet and their son, Luke, has returned home and moved into the “bat cave” in the basement.

Sandy reads them both the riot act and takes a job staging a boutique hotel recently acquired by her best friend’s boyfriend. The good news is that she can spend time in Atlanta with her recently married daughter, Shannon. The bad news is that Shannon soon receives a promotion and heads back up to Boston for training, leaving Sandy and her Southern son-in-law, Chance, as reluctant roommates. And Sandy finds herself in another delicate situation when she suspects her best friend’s boyfriend may be seeing another woman on the side. Fixing up houses may turn out to be easier than fixing up lives.    from Goodreads

Sandy has a husband and two grown children and is living in an old house in the Boston suburbs that she wants to sell.  Her daughter lives in Atlanta and miraculously her best friend’s boyfriend just bought a hotel there that could use a home stager?  Yeah.  She heads off in a huff, telling her husband not to call until their house was ready to sell, and maintains the attitude for much of  the book.

Sandy did talk a lot about staging, not anything you didn’t know if you’ve watched any HGTV, but it’s always good to be reminded. She even listed her top tips at the end: de-clutter, scrub, move things from the wall, rotate accessories, lights, mirrors, warm and neutral paint, decorate in groups of three, drop the frames.  All good reminders if you want to freshen up your house.

Well, maybe it lost something in the narration because I did listen to the first half in the car, because I have Goodreads friends who really liked it.  The intended audience would be midlife women who like to see their stories told with humor, so I fit the right age group, I just could not get myself to like Sandy and her perceived troubles.