Mean Season (Red Dress Ink)

Rating:
Summary: Great read, and not just for "chicks"
Review: EXCELLENT!! I really enjoyed reading the book, getting to know the characters, and following along with life in Pinecob. I kept debating whether I wanted Leanne to end up with Joshua or Max. Hope to see some of the characters again in a future book. Perhaps more on Sandy and Alice? A great debut novel and a truly great read from start to finish.


Rating:
Summary: Not your usual chick lit
Review: First of all I want to say this: Run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and get this book! And keep reading it. It is not mundane as the beginning would have you believe.

What was there not to like about this book? First of all, the main character, Leanne Gitlin is so real. Probably one of the most "real" characters I've ever read about. Her emotions, desires, and dreams were spot on. Leanne has been president of the Joshua Reed fan club for eight years ever since he was a soap opera star and she was a high-school senior. Now Joshua is one of Hollywood's leading men and after all these years she has an opportunity to meet him. Turns out that he is truly a great actor - all that charm was just for the screen whereas in real life he is more of a Colin Farrell-type character, IOW a "bad boy." The limo picks up Leanne in her little town of Pinecob, West Virginia and take her to Harpers Ferry where she meet's Josh's agent, publicist and Josh himself. Trouble is, every other word is the "F" word, he has a surly attitude, and a problem with alcohol. In fact, that very evening gets a DUI when he "borrows" the limo and takes himself on a little drive to the county where Leanne lives - and where she works in the county clerk's office. This is Josh's second DUI and he is placed on house arrest for 90 days --- at Leanne's home where she lives with her mother and her brother Beau Ray who although nearly 30 is brain-injured and has a mind more of a six-year-old. Suffice to say, things do not go smoothly for Josh or Leanne. He isn't happy about being in Pinecob and Leanne isn't exactly happy having him there.

Now, in most books this would turn be a romance between Josh and Leanne, but not this one. They do become friends, but her eye is on Max Campbell, an old family friend and assistant manager of the local Winn-Dixie.

This is a Red Dress Ink book - the Chick Lit line - but I wouldn't call this your ordinary Chick Lit book which is usually set in a big city with the main character having a fancy schmancy job. This is as small town as it gets and Leanne's job isn't very exciting (although she does dream of one day becoming a lawyer). There is so much depth to this book and to the character of Leanne. The entire time I kept thinking what a wonderful movie this would make. Colin Farrell as Josh, Renee Zellweger or Natalie Portman as Leanne, haven't decided who for Max - a young Robert Redford type or perhaps Brad Pitt! This is one of the best books I've read all year and if it doesn't get optioned for a movie I am going to be sorely disappointed. If any book has ever screamed "successful movie" this one does.


Rating:
Summary: Chic Lit Without The Fuss
Review: From the first chapter I felt a directness to Cochrane's style unmatched by her peers currently. Her 'heroine' purports the same quality: "a take me as I am" minus brashness or attitude very common in romantic fiction/humour writing right now. Story line is just a little left of center, which entertained me very much: president of soap stars' fan club, after years of effort manipulated by the L. A. entourage finds herself enabling said star with her family, friends and home, across the country from the bright lights. Believable, satisfying read. I hope Heather writes more.

Rating:
Summary: If this is chick lit, what does this make me? (rhetorical)
Review: I understand the premise of "Mean Season" makes for quick and easy labeling as a romance novel or as chick lit, but I'm no chick and I really enjoyed myself. The characters are quirky and sharply drawn, the dialogue quick and witty, and the novel's tone transcends the genre. It's funny and touching in a way in which all chromosomes can relate. Now I admit I was turned on to this book by women-folk, but I'm no Judas- I'm proud to say I liked it. There are many layers to Mean Season, so peel and eat each one. They're all delicious!

Rating:
Summary: I'm old, but I'm happy about Mean Season
Review: I'm happy, at age 62, to find a new kind of book to enjoy in the hammock and my big chair. MEAN SEASON, by the delightful Heather Cochran, in it's sweetness, reminds me of my crushes on Jimmy Dean and Marlon Brando in the 50's. They too were 'bad boys'. I find that the new language, the new awareness of family relationships, and the new sensibility of honest hopeful young fiction hooks me in as did the Catcher in the Rye when I was 22.
Thanks to Red Dress Ink!

Rating:
Summary: Mean Season
Review: Leanne Gitlin has loved Josh Reed since he was a doctor on General Hospital. Now that he's moved on to bigger and better things, she still loves him from afar, but it's about to get a lot closer. While shooting a Civil War epic in her hometown, Josh is arrested for DWI, and placed under house arrest, hers, for ninety days. While things are less than ideal, including Josh, especially his language, Leanne is allowed to get a bit of her dreams. After a heartbreaking moment though, the time to choose between dreams and reality will come.

**** Though it did't go quite in the direction I hoped for, Mean Season is above average on the Chick Lit meter. It belongs on the shelf of someone who enjoyed books such as Where the Heart Is or movies like Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. It's not all fun, there is a truly tragic scene, but then again, what is all fun? ****

Reviewed by Amanda Killgore.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo
Review: Loved it. The first third of the book moved slowly and I began to wonder if I wanted to finish it, but I was richly rewarded for sticking with it. Leanne is one of the most incredibly believable female characters I've encountered in recent reading. Although the movie-star-in-the-house plotline is initially easy to dismiss with a roll of the eyes, Cochran works with it deftly and produces a superb novel as she winds Josh's story into that of the Gitlin family. The dramatic wallop that occurs shortly before the end is wrenching and definitely lifts this book out of the category of simple "chick lit." I applaud Red Dress Ink for continuing to publish fine, thoughtful writing that treats the complexities of young women's lives seriously and skillfully. I look forward to reading more of Heather Cochran's work.

Rating:
Summary: The plotting is quick and the story is fresh
Review: Our culture is so celebrity-driven. Television, print and radio are filled with celebrity interviews with chatter so loud that it's completely consuming. Our worship of sports, film and music stars borders on the obscene. Thus, when a book like MEAN SEASON comes along with a fresh look at the toll and role of stardom, it's very refreshing.

The story takes place in Pinecob, West Virginia, the hometown of Leanne Gitlin. Leanne is the fan club president for an up-and-coming star, Joshua Reed. She has her head square on her shoulders and approaches this like a job instead of acting like a swooning fan. She knows all things Joshua, and for a girl stuck in a small town she has a lot of savvy and moxie about what does --- and does not --- make sense related to being a star.

While Leanne longs to leave Pinecob and disdains being there, a family crisis and loyalty to her mom has her rooted there for the moment doing her duty to the family.

Joshua, in typical teen idol bad boy fashion, lands a drunk driving conviction when he hits a cow on a dark country road. His sentence since this is not his first conviction: jail time. Leanne arranges for Joshua do his time at her house under house arrest instead of in the local jail. Seeing her home and world through Joshua's eyes has Leanne defensive on the things that she thinks matter and cringing at others. Joshua flips at the idea that there is no cable, satellite dish or any other of his expected creature comforts. Instead he is left in a place that time seems to have left behind.

Adjustments are made on all sides, thus keeping this from feeling like an episode in the New Beverly Hillbillies. Yes, people in town are intrigued by Joshua and his presence, but Leanne's tough stand with him keeps things on the straight and narrow. Instead of carousing, Joshua instead learns more about Leanne's world while she sees the shallowness of what his is. Instead of wanting Joshua to stay, Leanne counts the days until he leaves.

Subplots revolve around her mom's romance with the local judge, Leanne's younger brother (a town sports hero who was injured in an accident) and an older brother who mysteriously disappeared. There's also the boy at the local supermarket who, like Leanne, never left town and for whom her attraction is very real. Their misattempts at romance are as important to the pacing of the book as the rest of the story. What Leanne misses enhances what she longs for.

The plotting is quick and the story is fresh. It's smart and well written. While I was reading MEAN SEASON I was very busy with a number of projects. That said, I so looked forward to reading this book that I found myself waking early in the morning and staying up a bit later to get some more pages read. For the record, I can see a movie being made from this. On the flip side, the characters were so real that you do wonder what happened to them next.

One note: don't let the cover turn you off. To me, this could have been better. It's as cold as the book is warm. I know it's tough to do covers when a book is about this much emotion and feeling, and to me this one just does not hit the mark.

--- Reviewed by Carol Fitzgerald

Rating:
Summary: Transcends the genre
Review: The publicity suggests that its central premise is about a movie star forced to stay in a fan's house in a small West Virginia town. Maybe I'm snobbish but that put me off and relegated it to the romance category. I was expecting an unlikely story full of clichés and slushy sentimentality. Its central plot is not really about the movie star but a realistic and finely crafted tale of a woman forced to stay home to look after a brain-injured brother and a depressed mother. It is told in a spare pitch-perfect prose with never a wasted word.. I was reminded of Bobby Anne Mason, and even Eudora Welty.
"Back in Momma's worst times I'd call Tommy or Susan for help but neither ever offered to head home for even a week to make dinner or check which bills were least overdue. (That was around the same time the idea of me going off to a full-time college stopped being talked about like it was a good thing, something that might really happen.)"
Even the movie actor angle is not entirely fantastic (especially with Martha Stewart in minimum security in West Virginia). Joshua is a soap opera actor making a movie om location in the area, convicted of a second DUI, and sentenced to house arrest with work and AA release.
I've got to admit that it is warm and fuzzy and ends happily, so that it won't get reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement or the New York Review of Books but it contains better writing than many more pretentious works.




Rating:
Summary: A cut above 'chick lit'
Review: To catagorize this as simply chick lit is to do it a great disservice. The premise becomes plausible, the characters real and the situations heartfelt. It is a book about families and love and responsibilities mixed with a trouble making actor, a terrifically hot assistant manager of the Winn Dixie and Leanne, a twentysomething you would love to be friends with. Unlike many other books of this 'type' which I have read and enjoyed, this one I will remember and recommend.