If you thought Wall Street was cut-throat, wait till to you meet the Kelly bag-toting, Chanel-wearing, Bugaboo-pushing mothers of New York’s Upper East Side…
‘AFFLUENZA: malaise of the extremely wealthy; symptoms include panic over which color Bugaboo to buy and night sweats about which $15,000 pre-pre-school to apply to.’
Hannah adores her husband Josh, so when he gets offered a fabulous job in Manhattan, she's happy to abandon their cozy West Coast life for the social whirl of the Big Apple. But motherhood in Manhattan is a whole different ball-game – in fact, for the bored and pampered women of New York’s wealthiest families, it’s practically an Olympic sport. In a world where who you know and how you look is everything, Hannah finds herself adrift in a sea of ’Reximoms (mothers who drop the baby weight in two weeks or less), Nannyjackers (mothers who try to steal other people’s nannies) and Momsicles (cold-hearted mothers who never cuddle their kids).
Suddenly loving her family isn’t enough – Hannah just can’t seem to measure up. And with Josh working longer and longer hours, her quest to fit in – whether it’s getting her daughter into the city's top nursery or finding the perfect apartment – is increasingly lonely. So when an old flame re-enters her life, who can blame her for wondering what might have been? But as old passions are rekindled, Hannah finds herself increasingly torn between a life of happily married motherhood and the murky moral state in which her wealthy friends seem to live. And when her marriage begins to feel the strain, she will have to learn to fight for what it is she really wants in this brilliantly funny novel about love, motherhood and staying sane…