L.A. WOMAN

Yardley takes readers on a fast-paced tour of the joys and perils of single life in Los Angeles in her first novel. At the urging of Benjamin, her workaholic fiancé of four years, Sarah Walker has left Northern California for the mayhem of L.A., only to find out that he will not be joining her for several months. With her crummy entry-level job, she can't handle the rent on her own, so she decides to share her apartment with Martika, a charming and tireless party queen—the polar opposite of naïve Sarah. Their friendship is tentative at best, but when Sarah freaks out and quits her job, dumps selfish Benjamin and chops off all her hair, Martika springs into action and the two really bond. Sarah gets a makeover and is pulled into a whirlwind of clubs, cocktails and men, but Benjamin keeps popping up, and she wonders if she's really cut out for the life of a single girl. Sarah's smalltown shtick gets tiring, but Martika and other characters, like Sarah's best friend Judith, an uber-organized exec who is navigating the murky waters of online infidelity, pick up some of the slack. Although everything about this novel—the requisite fabulous gay friend, the chapters named for the Doors' song titles, the far-fetched ending—should be annoying, Yardley throws it all together with enough brio to make it a fun book to bring to the beach on either coast. (June)