Everything's Relative - Softcover

McCarthy, Jenna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425280691 ISBN 13: 9780425280690

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Her two memoirs were “hilarious.”* Her first novel, Pretty Much Screwed, was “brilliant.”** Now, Jenna McCarthy returns with a novel of crazy last wishes and life-changing first steps…
 
When their mother dies, sisters Jules, Brooke, and Lexi breathe a collective sigh of relief. Their days of being hurt and controlled by Juliana Alexander are over.
 
It turns out, Juliana isn’t about to let a little detail like death stop her.
 
The three estranged sisters—one control freak, one peacekeeper and one red hot mess—are shocked to discover that their mother was hiding a massive fortune, one that promises to completely transform all of their lives. But in classic Juliana fashion, there’s a catch. Three of them, to be exact.
 
Now Jules, Brooke, and Lexi find themselves forced to rely on one another in order to become the women their mother wanted them to be. With millions of dollars on the line and as many obstacles in the way, the sisters embark on a hilarious journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and the real meaning of wealth.


READERS GUIDE INCLUDED


*Jane Heller, New York Times bestselling author

**Janet Evanovich, #1 New York Times bestselling author
 

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jenna McCarthy is the internationally published writer of Pretty Much Screwed, I’ve Still Got It…I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It,  If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon, and The Parent Trip, as well as a former radio personality and recovering leopard-print addict.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Twenty Years Later

Jules

Brooke

Lexi

The Sisters

Jules

Brooke

Lexi

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Readers Guide

Prologue

Jules rested the wooden spoon on the edge of the pan she’d been stirring and turned to Brooke. “Will you please call Lexi in for dinner?” It was almost six o’clock and their mother liked dinner on the table at exactly that time, whether she was home herself or not. Of course, it stressed Jules out when she wasn’t, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

“Sure,” Brooke said. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted into them. “LEXI! DINNER’S READY!”

Jules cringed.

“YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME,” eight-year-old Lexi called back from somewhere outside. She stuck out her tongue after she said it, even though she knew nobody could see her. That part didn’t matter to Lexi one bit.

Brooke poked her head out the side door. Her younger sister was out on the small, weed-tangled patio doing her favorite thing in the world: frying ants with a magnifying glass.

“Lexi, Jules said it’s time to eat,” Brooke said as firmly as she could.

“Jules isn’t the boss of me, either,” Lexi said without looking up.

“Please, Lexi, come inside, okay? Jules has been in here sweating her butt off for an hour. The least you can do is come to the table.”

“I can’t,” Lexi said. “I have two left and I need to kill them. They’re squirrely little shits, too. As soon as I get them, I’ll come in.”

“If Mom hears you talk like that, she’ll ground you for life,” Brooke said, wondering if any of Lexi’s second-grade classmates had potty mouths. Brooke highly doubted it. Even her own friends weren’t really swearing yet, and they were two whole years older.

“Then I’ll sneak out,” Lexi said with a shrug. Brooke pulled the door closed.

“Any suggestions?” she asked Jules.

“I’ll handle Lexi,” Jules said, sighing as she scraped a pile of seasoned ground beef onto hamburger buns she’d laid open on each of four plates. She arranged slices of apples carefully on each one and brought them to the table. She knew her mom would be annoyed that she hadn’t made a vegetable, but she’d gotten wrapped up in her studying and had lost track of time. She’d made a conscious choice: No vegetable was better than dinner not being on the table when Juliana expected it. The apples would have to do. Without being asked, Brooke filled four glasses with water and set one beside each place setting. She folded four napkins and tucked one neatly under the side of each plate, then added forks and knives. Jules wiped her hands on a towel that was tucked into the pocket of her shorts and opened the door to the patio.

“Lexi, I mean it, it’s time to come in,” she said sternly. “Mom will be home any minute.”

“Got ’em! Ha!” Lexi shouted. She stood up, dropped the magnifying glass unceremoniously onto the pile of dead ants and brushed her hands on her dirty cut-offs. It was a blistering Southern California evening and sweat was leaving trails of almost-clean skin down Lexi’s grimy cheeks. “What’s for dinner?” She planted her hands on her hips and blew a chunk of thick dark hair out of her eyes.

“Sloppy Joes,” Jules told her. “You should wash your hands.”

“You should mind your own beeswax,” Lexi said. She marched into the house, letting the screen door slam in Jules’s face.

“Can’t you just be nice?” Brooke whispered at her.

“Nope,” Lexi replied. She was already sitting at the table, shoveling food into her mouth. Meat was spilling out of the sides of her bun and juice was running down her arm.

“Brooke, sit. I just heard Mom’s car,” Jules said, squaring her shoulders and self-consciously smoothing down her shirt.

Brooke nodded and lowered herself into her chair just as Juliana swept into the room.

“Hey, Mom,” Jules said brightly. “Dinner’s just ready.” She added the obvious last bit as much for the announcement as to deflect attention from her filthy youngest sister.

“Hay is for horses, and I can see that,” Juliana said, taking in the table and Lexi at the same time. She raised her eyebrows at her youngest daughter. Lexi, naturally, ignored her glare. “May I ask what it is?”

“They’re Sloppy Joes,” Brooke said in a rush. “We had them at Kylie Bennett’s birthday party and they were awesome. Jules figured out how to make them all by herself. Don’t they smell great?”

“Unless they can cure cancer, I’d suggest you find a more accurate term than ‘awesome’ to describe them,” Juliana said, taking her seat. “Did you run today?”

“Four miles,” Brooke told her, beaming. “I’m the only one in my grade who can run that far without stopping.” Juliana said nothing.

“How was your day?” Jules asked her mom, rushing to fill the awkward silence.

“Nothing but pure, unadulterated joy,” Juliana replied, the sarcasm dripping from her words. It was no secret she hated her job as a receptionist at the uppity Salon Patine, but the girls routinely wished she would pretend to hate it a little bit less. “Where did you get the meat?”

“Ralphs,” Jules told her. “It was on sale so I bought a bunch and froze the rest.” Jules walked to Eastridge Junior High each day and there were several grocery stores on her route, so Juliana had turned over most of the shopping duties to her. Jules never complained about having to lug those heavy bags home every other day, not even once.

Juliana nodded vague approval before shifting her eyes to Lexi, who was licking sauce off of her wrist.

“I got a one hundred on my history test today,” Jules blurted before Juliana could speak. She was in all honors classes, and spent whatever time she had left after taking care of her sisters with her nose in some gigantic textbook or other.

“You studied like crazy,” Brooke said. “You should have.”

“Do your lips ever hurt from kissing butt all the time?” Lexi asked Brooke.

“Try the meat, Mom,” Jules urged, jumping between her sisters as she always did in the hopes of staving off a scene.

Juliana used her fork to place a tiny bite of meat into her mouth. Her grimace was small but unmistakable. Before Jules could think of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0425280691
• ISBN 13: 9780425280690
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland