Book Review: The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander

 Thank you to #NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book and review it! Also thank you to the publisher William Morrow. 

 

 

Workplace romance, it happens all the time. But for Lili Lowe, she has a unique experience! She works as an assistant for a local politician. Teddy is Mr. Good-looking, has a great reputation and is married.  This makes for great scandalous material for the tabloids if they got wind of hankypanky going on. 

Ohps, Teddy gets caught with his pants down, literally, in the back seat of a car with Lili’s mouth otherwise occupied.  The picture starts a firestorm and from there, things get outrageous! Thus, the novel The Lowe Job. Get ready for laughter and underneath a reality check on our culture.

Lili's mom Lydia has other plans besides letting her daughter’s life go down the tubes. She decides to cash in on her ‘misfortune’ and Lilli’s newfound celebrity status. What follows is similar to a Kardashian family scheme to get one person popular from something illicit and then have all the other sisters capitalize on it as well. Thus, Lili’s sister Iris, Stevie and Katie are drawn into their mother Lydia’s web of 'let's get popular and make money!'

This is a book I really wasn’t sure I would like. Early on, I almost put it down thinking it seemed shallow. I was wrong.  As the story unfolds the author really makes excellent points through this funny story and bizarre circumstances. Right between the lines of the story are themes there for the taking.  

One quite striking, particularly if you reexamine Monika Lewinsky, it is easy to quickly degrade  women’s reputations for ill behavior but men in the same situation can get a quick easy pass.  Ratings matter, scandals sell, and in the process, innocent lives get hurt, in some cases almost irreparable. People get popular and become household names for the wrong reasons.  Clearly in The Lowe Job the youngest sister in the family’s life starts going down the tubes. Katie, a 17 year old, doesn't enjoy the spotlight and everything she has worked for hard for and accomplished gets pushed away and she is basically another tool for the family to get rich off of.  Her mom tries to control the narrative but can you really do that with the press? 

Most of the women are attractive in this story. As in real life, in some ways, this helps but can also be a hindrance. Women love to hate pretty women and men often assume they are shallow if they're pretty and or dress a certain way. Other women feel they get what negativity comes to them by the way they dress.   

The characterization is fabulous in this book. The reader finds it easy to distinguish between all of the main women in the Lowe family.  Each are very different in tangible ways.  The book's is expressively written, both in dialogue, actions and their thought processes, all which we, the reader, are a part of.

The reality show created, the title The Lowe Job, shows things are not as they seem . Too often the public finds it easier to believe what the media says than to question it. 

I would rate this book excellent. It reminds me of a book I read years ago called Cinderella Ate My Daughter. People will not read books that are boring and factual, that book falls more in those lines which is why it probably was not popular. This author took the concepts of more serious issues and has turned it into what will most likely be a top selling book.  The storyline is humorous, emotional and relatable. The Lowe Job encompasses many of the factors that are an issue in our culture but in a light-hearted Laugh Out Loud story that is fun to read! 

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