Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Franny Fabricant was the product of her time as well as her position in life. Although she graduated from one of the Seven Sisters colleges, she was mostly educated in order to be a successful wife and mother as well as to support her husband’s career by being a good conversationalist and able to hold her own at dinner and cocktail parties.

Her mother passed away while she was still young and thus her aunt, Rose, had a strong effect on her along with the culture in which she was raised. Sometimes the two forces were diametrically opposed. And that is the crux of the story. How Fanny navigates not only young widowhood, being a single mother, and learning how to support herself and her daughter makes for a very interesting story. Throw in the McCarthyism and two men who are polar opposites and therein lies the inner conflict of the main character.

I enjoyed reading Franny’s journey and rooting for her to make the right decisions. Her aunt Rose was a great character and her story was intriguing as well. We got it in little dribbles, but she was a strong character who lived a full life herself even though many people in the book felt sorry for her for never marrying. I liked this character a lot.

This book moves at a nice pace. No explosions, car chases or other crazy drama, just a lovely read with a likeable cast of characters—although one of the men set my teeth on edge—in a good way as far as bringing conflict to the plot.

The setting, era and morals of the day are well set out by the author and this is just very much an enjoyable read. Five Stars.

Description

In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each…

Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble With You is the story of a young woman whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Raised never to step out of bounds, educated in one of the Sister Seven Colleges for a career as a wife and mother, torn between her cousin Mimi who is determined to keep her a “nice girl”—the kind that marries a doctor—and her aunt Rose who has a rebellious past of her own, Fanny struggles to raise her young daughter and forge a new life by sheer will and pluck. When she gets a job as a secretary to the “queen” of radio serials—never to be referred to as soaps—she discovers she likes working, and through her friendship with an actress who stars in the series and a man who writes them, comes face to face with the blacklist which is destroying careers and wrecking lives. Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what she knows is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light years away and strangely immediate.