REVENGE OF THE KUDZU DEBUTANTES

Three Southern Belles wreak havoc in the lives of their cheating husbands in this light, likable debut.

Good manners and good breeding are one and all in small town Ithaca, Ga., making it hard for a lady to get a little breathing room. That’s what wild child Eadie Boone has been fighting for all her life. Eadie, who spent her childhood in a trailer park and now shares an antebellum mansion with husband Trevor Boone, is blindsided when he announces plans to marry his secretary. Trevor’s sanctimonious law partner Charles Broadwell, meanwhile, has no intention of leaving his little wife—he’s spent too long browbeating meek Nita (who is secretly addicted to the raunchiest of romance novels) to train someone new. And finally there is Lavonne; oblivious that husband Leonard (third partner in the prestigious Boone and Broadwell law firm) is hiding his assets to better swindle her when he gets around to filing for divorce. One night after the firm’s annual garden party, the three friends discover that their husbands’ yearly hunting trip to Montana has included the comfort of call girls. They decide on revenge, and so unfurls a complicated plan requiring female impersonators, the sale of house and goods and Ithaca’s best wives-only divorce attorney. For Eadie, this is a bittersweet scheme, because though Trevor has cheated on her (and she on him), the two are as perfect together as any couple could be. And while Lavonne could care less about leaving shlumpy old Leonard, it is proper Nita who surprises all by falling in love with Jimmy Lee Motes, a sexy young carpenter. Though the novel has its fair share of conventional devices (of our heroines, one is wild, one sensible, one shy) and uplifting female bonding, it also has some genuinely hilarious moments (particularly during the lawyers ill-fated hunting trip) and characters that would make good friends.

Enjoyable (and a little predictable) summer fare.