THE CHECKLIST

A corporate consultant thinks she has it all: good life, perfect partner, fast track to the placement she wants in Paris. But when she's sent on a long-term assignment to her hometown, Seattle, and must live with her parents, she realizes that she doesn’t.

Pencil-skirt– and Manolo-wearing Dylan Delacroix—a “Black Katharine Hepburn”—lives in Houston with her methodical, gorgeous, blond-haired boyfriend, Nicolas. He's just as organized as she is, and she finds the routine soothing after a childhood spent with no boundaries. But when she’s sent by her employer, Kaplan and Associates, on assignment to Seattle for a few months and Nicolas finally meets her family, her worlds collide: Her well-to-do artistic parents, Bernice and Henry, and her sister, Neale, are appalled by Nicolas’ disrespect toward her and them. And as Dylan tries to help Technocore, the troubled company with which she's been placed, founder Tim Gunderson seems ready to undercut her at every turn. Throw in her best friend, Stacy, who's Filipina; Mike, the gorgeous Latino boy across the street who's getting a Ph.D. in early childhood development; Linda and Patricia Robinson, his two moms; and Deep and Brandt, Dylan's new best friends at the office, and this story has an extremely full slate of characters who together draw Dylan back into the messy, unscheduled, opinionated, overwhelming life she thought she’d left behind. Readers ready to settle in to a long, detailed read about Dylan’s burgeoning interest in Mike, low-stakes neighborhood squabbling between the Robinson and Delacroix parents, and Dylan’s efforts to improve productivity at a “profit-sinking black hole” of a tech company that seems to have an endless supply of money will enjoy this lengthy tome. Some, on the other hand, might find its insistence on heavy-handed explanations and descriptions off-putting.

A highly organized and detailed book with a predictable storyline.