Review: Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen

Park Avenue Summer

by Renee Rosen

Publisher: Berkley PRH

Pages: 368

Format: book 

Buy the Book: Amazon 

Goodreads:  Mad Men meets The Devil Wears Prada as Renée Rosen draws readers into the glamour of 1965 New York City and Cosmopolitan Magazine, where a brazen new Editor-in-Chief--Helen Gurley Brown--shocks America by daring to talk to women about all things off limits...

New York City is filled with opportunities for single girls like Alice Weiss who leaves her small Midwestern town to chase her big city dreams and unexpectedly lands the job of a lifetime working for Helen Gurley Brown, the first female Editor-in-Chief of a then failing Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Nothing could have prepared Alice for the world she enters as editors and writers resign on the spot, refusing to work for the woman who wrote the scandalous bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl. While confidential memos, article ideas, and cover designs keep finding their way into the wrong hands, someone tries to pull Alice into this scheme to sabotage her boss. But Alice remains loyal and becomes all the more determined to help Helen succeed. As pressure mounts at the magazine and Alice struggles to make her way in New York, she quickly learns that in Helen Gurley Brown's world, a woman can demand to have it all.

Kritters Thoughts:  A fantastic historical fiction that blurs the lines of fact and fiction.  This story focuses on a fictional character, Alice Weiss, the assistant to the real life Editor-in-Chief Helen Gurley Brown of the Cosmopolitan magazine at a time when the magazine made a major change in its content and there were a lot of questions as to if it should and would it survive.  

First let me say, I absolutely adored this book.  It was exactly what I like in a historical fiction book, great characters, some truth and some knowledge of something I had no idea about!  Alice was a great character to follow through this story.  She felt genuine and real and someone I wouldn't mind being friends with.  I loved her juxtaposition with Helen Gurley Brown.  I hope that Helen was portrayed similar to how she is in real life or as close as possible.  I really enjoyed learning about some of the history behind the Cosmopolitan magazine and that it had some ups and downs.  It was interesting to read its history and how it almost folded and to think of what it is today.  This is the big reason as to why I read and enjoy historical fiction.  

I read and loved Windy City Blues also by Renee Rosen, so I may have to make a point of reading her other two backlist before her next one comes out.


Rating: absolutely loved it and want a sequel

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Berkley PRH.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.