Pen Pals sucked.
There are three Olivia Goldsmith novels worth reading IMO: Marrying Mom, First Wives Club and The Bestseller. I'm not saying the rest is crap but Pen Pals is most definitely crap.
The plot is ridiculous: Woman takes heat for insider trader and makes friends the "cool" group of women in there and they help out the prison or something at some point or whatever. You can see how I feel about this plot. Goldsmith has a formula that works and it's not seen in this book. Her best novels include: gay characters, brash humor, and New York City. At some point reading her is like reading really good gossip. This book had none of that. At least not in the first 80 pages, which is where I stopped.
The characters were unbelievable (which honestly is nothing new with Goldsmith except this time they were just pathetic) and the best part of the book were the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Movita Watson a self described "proud black woman" did it for me. The book was also depressing and I could not imagine hijinx ensuing naturally. And hijinx were promised in the plot.
I had to re-read "The Bestseller" in order to cheer myself up about attempting this novel. This book reminded me why I didn't touch her latter works.