The Memo

Starred review from May 15, 2024
What if "the memo" wasn't a metaphor, and you really didn't get it? At 35, Jenny Green is happy-ish. She lives in Pittsburgh--not exactly the center of the universe--with Hal, an unambitious but super-hot guy she met nine years ago on a beach in Costa Rica. She works for a philanthropy that supports girls and women, which sounds good on paper, but it's really a vanity project for a wealthy nightmare of a woman who only wants Jenny to get her coverage in the national media. Oh, and it turns out Hal is having an affair. Jenny has no desire to go to her 15-year college reunion, but she skipped the last one and her (more successful) friends are persistent. What she doesn't expect, once on campus, is to run into Desiree LeBlanc, the pushy career counselor whose advice she spurned just before graduation--and who's now offering her another chance. It turns out Desiree had been planning to give her the Memo--the "actual, tangible, Upper-Case-Letter thing"--and the fact that Jenny has spent her life floundering can be attributed to her having walked away. But Jenny isn't just going to be following the Memo's advice going forward; Desiree and her Consortium have discovered a way to send her back to crucial moments in the past with explicit instructions on what she should be doing to turn herself into a self-actualized superwoman. What could go wrong? Dodes and Mechling have come up with a great concept--the elevator pitch writes itself!--and filled it with insight, wit, and perfectly chosen details of life among a segment of the population that might once have looked at Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In as a guide. They explore issues of love, work, friendship, ambition, and fulfillment that feel timeless yet particularly pertinent in the social media era, when it's so hard to see past the surface of other people's high-powered facades. So sharp, so funny. You might feel better or worse about your own life, but you'll definitely be laughing.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2024

Dodes and Mechling's first book together (which is Dodes's fiction debut and Mechling's second adult novel, after How Could She) is a tribute to a world of possibility. When a career counselor suggests to college senior Jenny Green that she quit school a few weeks before graduation, she does not take that advice, but while her friends move on to uber-successful careers, Jenny feels like she is stagnating. She wonders if everyone else got the memo and learned to succeed and why she did not. She's not thrilled with her new assistant job, she's pretty sure her boyfriend is cheating on her, and she has to deal with her upcoming 15-year college reunion. Then she receives an anonymous text message urging her to collect a memoir and follow its instructions; she does, and her whole world starts shifting on its axis. With a whiff of time travel, Jenny bounces between her old life and this possible new life, but eventually, she has to make a not-inconsiderable decision and face reality head-on. VERDICT Millennial women in particular might be drawn to this inventive novel about launching one's life. Read-alikes include The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas, Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale, and The Good Part by Sophie Cousens.--Stacy Alesi

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Starred review from May 21, 2024
Jenny Green missed the memo. Not the literal memo, but the metaphorical, get-your-life-together one that all her college friends seemed to have gotten. Which explained why they were all living fabulous, high-profile lives and she was just . . . coasting along, almost 36 years old and going nowhere. Then, at her college reunion, faced with yet more evidence that she wasn't measuring up, she discovers that ""the memo"" isn't so metaphorical after all, and the secret organization pulling the strings is about to give her a second chance to go back and do it all over again. But is the life they think she should have lived really better? Mechling (How Could She, 2019) and first-time novelist Dodes have created a cast of characters that feels grounded and likable (with some unlikeable but distinctly entertaining ones too) despite the zany, darkly comic premise. A fresh and intriguing--and surprisingly deep--take on the second-chance trope, this one is for anyone who's wondered what would have happened to their life if only they had made a different choice. A great read-alike for fans of Josie Silver.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 8, 2024
Debut author Dodes and Mechling (How Could She) spin a fanciful and moving Sliding Doors–esque tale. Jenny Green, 35, is overworked and underappreciated by her narcissistic boss, Alice, and suspects that her boyfriend, Hal, is cheating on her. Meanwhile, her best friends Geeta and Leigh seem to have their lives together, and Jenny starts to wonder if the successful women around her all got the same memo that she missed. Color her surprised when a woman from her past, college career counselor Desiree LeBlanc, reappears in her life to deliver just that. The memo turns out to be a set of instructions for reliving life’s turning points, and making different decisions. Using it, Jenny rewrites her life. Now she’s dating Alex, the wealthy, art-collecting lawyer with whom she previously missed her chance at connection, and running her own vegan meal-delivery service. But alternative choices have unexpected consequences and in changing her history, Jenny may inadvertently impact the life of someone she cares for deeply. The authors make it easy to suspend disbelief by keeping the focus squarely on Jenny’s emotional journey, and they expertly capture her fear and ambivalence in the face of risky life decisions. This well-told tale will leave readers wanting more.