Secrets to Happiness

by Sarah Dunn

Book Overview

Holly Frick has just endured the worst kind of breakup: the kind where you're still in love with the person leaving you. While her wounds are still dangerously close to the surface, her happily married best friend confesses over a bottle of wine that she is this close to having an affair. And another woman comes to Holly for advice about her love life--with Holly's ex! Holly decides that if everyone around her can take pleasure wherever they find...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316013587
• ISBN13: 9780316013581
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful treat of a read ...

I didn't want this story to end. Not because there was high suspense and and I just had to find out what happened. Not because of any intrigue. It has neither of those. What it does have is a cast of characters that are so smoothly created by Sarah Dunn that you actually care about what is going to happen to each and every one of them. Holly Frick is the main character. She holds the thread that loosely binds together an unusual, flawed, and ultimately wonderful cast of characters. The story moves seemlessly across story lines of each of the people in Holly's life. And, yes, Sarah Dunn manages to get you to care about each and every one of them. This was an excellent book that earned permanent keeper status on my shelf. I highly recommend it.

A wonderful escape

I loved this book. I've been waiting for it since I read The Big Love two years ago, and it didn't disappoint. The story subtly weaves together the lives of several New Yorkers wrestling with real questions about friendships, love, and how to live...I was captivated. It's been awhile since I started a book and didn't want to put it down, but this was one of those stories. Grab Secrets To Happiness for your next free afternoon--It will make you a little bit happier.

Happiness is a warm puppy

This is a fun read. I wouldn't characterize it as chick lit. I'd call it human experience lit. Holly Frick is divorced, conflicted, frustrated, full of advice, and full of humor. Her life is complicated, like all of our lives. What makes her a truly likable character is not so much her advice to her friends or her tolerance of their flaws. What makes her a great character is how she can see the humor in every situation, no matter how dreadful. Does she emerge unscathed? Of course not. Does she learn immediately from each mistake? No way. Does a handsome prince arrive to save the day? I don't think so. But slowly and surely, with her take on life, Holly moves forward. I recommend it for everyone whose life is too complicated. Prepare to laugh. And yes, happiness really is a warm puppy.

A Whole Lot of Fun

Thirty something Holly Frick is a year out from a divorce she didn't see coming. She'd been in love with her husband, probably still is. She's written a forgettable chick-lit novel called HELLO MR. HEARTACHE and where she once wrote screen plays for sitcoms people actually watched and enjoyed, now she's writing for a show called "The Mighty Moppets" a stupid show for eight-year-old girls. He career is sliding down the toilet. Her life isn't ticking along so well either. She gets an e-mail from her ex's (the ex before the husband) girlfriend. She's in Colorado and the ex, a guy named Spence is in New York. It's a long distance relationship that was maybe going somewhere, but it seems Spence has been having sex with Crazy Molly and Molly's taken pictures (you can imagine the kind) and sent them to Catherine and now Catherine wants Holly's advice about Spence, because, after all, wasn't Spence the guy she'd written about in her novel. To further complicate Holly's life her best friend Amanda is seeing a guy named Jake. Problem is Amanda is married to Mark and they have a darling, bouncing, blond, big, baby boy named Jacob. Amanda isn't supposed to be seeing anybody but her husband. That's what Holly thinks, so how com she's interested in Jake. And what about the twenty-two-year old child she's sleeping with. It kind of makes her feel like a cradle robber. She needs something. So she gets a dog named Chester. And Chester's not just any dog, he's got cancer, a brain tumor that has to come out and I think I'll just stop right here. Well a little more, Holly's advice might just get her in a little trouble. You'll have to go out and get yourself a copy of this funny, very witty story to find out just what kind of a fix or fixes Holly gets herself into in this novel that is a whole lot of fun.

Charming, Delightful & Funny Chick Lit!

Holly frick, a young divorcee, is trying to make sense of her mixed up life. In this funny, yet tasteful novel, she tries to regain her "path" to happiness with the help of her support group which includes a college buddy that cheats on her husband, a washed out gay writer who inhales xanax, a few ex's and their inquisitive girlfriends, and of course, a lovable dog and puppy. It is filled with amusing puns and gags and left me in countless bouts of chuckles. (i,e "My dog has cancer, and you are asking me if I have a boyfriend? or "Do you want to know the secret to a happy marriage? ...Put your wife on Paxil") The book has a little bit of everything- sex, lies & betrayals. I highly recommend this "chick lit" to any gal who is in need of a good laugh!