I was so dissappointed in this. I've really enjoyed Elinor Lipman's novels before, even when they are frankly quite absurd, but I just could not find anything redeemable in this one. None of the characters or situations seemed even remotely possible or even how anything would ever happen or how any person would actually act in the bizarre situations she created. About 1,000 things were left hanging at the end but I really did not care much. The only thing that did ring true was the truly bizarre drop off a cliff feeling that did feel like the early days of the Pandemic and made me wonder if everything she was writing was in 2019 and all her plans for an ending suddenly also dropped off a cliff. I really wish I could find a redeeming feature but I could not. Okay, Yasemin's cooking did sound really good. That was about it.

2.5 Cute, but kinda fizzled out in the end. ( )

This was billed as a satire of the Trump administration, and it was, in that it takes place tangentially in the Trump White House, and various members of the Trump family appear in absentia. Rachel Klein is hit by a car outside the DC administration building where she has just lost her job due to an errant email criticizing the president. The episode spirals when she realizes just who hit her, and what they were doing when they did. Rachel’s life, which has until that point seemed stagnant, suddenly takes a few weird turns, as she finds employment with a muckraker who wants to exploit her experience for his own content, meets a man who works in a wine store, and delves into the world of tabloid headlines. It is a twisty yet cohesive story, and it was entertaining—it didn’t grab me super hard, but I did want to see how it ended. It didn’t feel “too soon” to read a book set in this forgettable era, with Trump in the rear view, though the coda did bring us uncomfortably close to the present. ( )

I picked up Rachel to the Rescue because I was looking for something light and cheerful. (Also, it has Rachel in the title!) Luckily, this hit the spot. Rachel Klein has a job at the Trump White House taping together all of the documents that the president rips up after he reads them. One drunken night, she accidentally replies all to an office-wide email in which she criticizes Trump and his ilk. She is promptly fired the next morning. As she is leaving the office on foot, she’s run over by a car and wakes up later in the hospital.

When Rachel finds out who ran her over, that opens up a whole can of worms that could involve the president. She takes a new job working for a muckraking journalist who mainly hired her for the dirt on Trump. She tries her best to stay above the fray but it’s not always possible. Meanwhile, her personal life is actually going pretty well – her roommates set her up with a great guy and she has very loving parents.

I found this book to be charming. I liked that there wasn’t too much drama, apart from Rachel trying to figure out who ran her over and why. She and her boyfriend never fought – it was nice. As far as romance goes, it’s extremely chaste. That may be good or bad depending on how steamy you like your books. Also, it takes down Trump in many ways so if you’re a fan of his, you definitely won’t like this book. I personally thought it was really funny. Recommended. ( )

https://www.instagram.com/p/CX99WPXrGHA/

Eleanor Lipman - Rachel to the Rescue: Was quite bored until the end of the second to last chapter when she introduced the pandemic. #cursorybookreviews #cursoryreviews ( )