The Accidental Bestseller
Author: Wendy Wax
ISBN: 978042522671

The Accidental Bestseller tells the story of four writers and best friends. The story opens in NYC at a writers conference where author Kendall Aim’s is up for the prestigious Zelda award. She is counting on this award to boost her career and give her a renewed sense of purpose in writing.

by Mallory St. James, a NY Times best selling author, is secretly struggling with writing her next book and her relationship with her husband. Faye Truett, an inspirational writer with a televangelist husband has a secret that she can’t share with anyone– especially her husband. Tanya Mason, a single mother of two works two jobs, plus writing just to make ends meet.

Their unlikely friendships blossomed years earlier at a similar writers conference. Since then, the four women have been there for each other through thick and thin, writing struggles and personal crises.

They once again come together when Kendall loses the prestigious writing award, is faced with a looming deadline from a publishing house that can’t wait to drop her and to make matters even worse- she has just found out her husband is cheating on her. Mallory, Faye and Tanya join Kendall at her mountain house to brainstorm the novel that she desperately doesn’t want to write. They come up with the brilliant idea to help Kendall by collaborating and writing the book together. Little do they know, the book is about to become a bestseller creating lots of trouble for each of the women along the way.

I absolutely LOVED this book. I’ve been reading a lot of YA lately and while I love YA, it was nice and refreshing to pick up this women’s fiction book and jump into the world of grown women and their struggles.

The friendship between these four women is dynamic. Each woman is different, but their friendship is strong. I loved learning about each woman’s life and how they got to where they are in their careers. I especially liked seeing them come together to help Kendall and I enjoyed scenes where they brainstormed ideas and collaborated on writing.

This book gives you an insiders peek at the cutthroat world of publishing. Several scenes depict Kendall’s evil and grump editor and her young wide-eyed and hopeful assistant. Readers will get to hear a little more about how a publishing house runs and how only the popular authors get a choice in their book covers or how their book is marketed. A board room scene of an editor presenting a book she wants the house to take on proves extremely interesting as we hear how and why a book will be chosen, what creates excitement at a publishing house and the process from idea to bookshelf.

While this book is fiction, it sheds a lot of light on the publishing industry. While I’d like to hope that the world of publishing is a little bit nicer than what Wendy Wax portrays in this book, I can’t be sure until I get there, right?

Author Wendy Wax will be the first person to tell you that this is the ideal beach read. In fact, she is having a little contest– take a picture of yourself reading the book on the beach and send it in to win a beach bag of books.

5/5