Riverside Drive

I just discovered Laura Van Wormer's books in a dusty little corner of a cozy used book store. Picked up several and put them in chronological order and RIVERSIDE DRIVE was the first. The author's debut it turns out. What a good solid read. Characters, colorful and fully drawn. The flavor of the city. The news biz. The ugly face of alcoholism. The warmth of friendship. The joy of new love, the sadness of love gone bad. A grand soap opera, but with a realness to the characters, their reactions to life's slings and arrows. This was written in 1988 and is perhaps a wee bit dated in some of the attitudes. But if you can let yourself time travel a bit, you won't notice:}

I read this book in two nights. It's like eating Cheetos rather than having salmon or going to see The Matrix instead of Election. You know it's going to be a stupid thing to do but you're going to end up loving it anyway! Interesting characters and great setting. I mean, who DOESN'T love Riverside Drive? It's a wonderful community if you can afford it.

A bit of a fairy-tale optimism flavors this book but to me it was respite from the Big Bad World. Despite its Pollyanna undercurrents, the characters are 3-dimensionally portrayed albeit quaint creatures that I wish would move into my neighborhood.

If you start the saga of the Cochrans and Alexandra Waring, you must then progress to "West End" and then on to "Any Given Moment" before you can get a normal night's sleep. These are memorable characters and you find yourself thinking and caring about them throughout all three books!

RIVERSIDE DRIVE AND WESTEND WERE EXCELLENT! I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE SAGA OF THE COCHRANS AND MS WARING CONTINUE/ALSO WEST END COULD ALSO HAVE MORE SEQUELS/HOPE TO SEE SOME SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!