Review: Shy Town Girls (Book 1) by M.G. Wilson
Out of all of Chicago’s more upscale magazines, I have a certain fondness for Today’s Chicago Women. Sure, it talks about parties and fancy things, but it also offers some good career/networking advice, does great profiles of prominent Chicago women and looks into issues like diversity in the corporate world and delays in rape kit testing. Whatever else it may print, Today’s Chicago Women’s primary mission is to help women succeed - and I like to think that it takes its mission very seriously.
So when the magazine recommended Shy Town Girls - a self-published book series by four Chicago authors - I decided to check it out.
The description made the project seem interesting. Four Chicago area authors - Melissa G Wilson, Jennifer Yih, Katie Leimkuehler, Kate Clinesmith - teamed up to create a four-part book series inspired by their experiences of trying to make it in Chicago when they were in their mid-20s. While all four books would feature the same four characters, each author would write one book that focused on one character in particular.
I’m always intrigued by collaborative writing projects. The Chicago setting only made even more interesting. I was a bit torn about the set-up - four girls rooming together in a prestigious Gold Coast neighborhood - but I figured it never hurts to step outside my comfort zone a little.
I wanted to like it. I really did…
First, let’s talk about the plot. The book focused on Bobbi Bertucci, a modeling agent trying to extract herself from a destructive relationship. When Meryl, an older friend from college, offers to her a chance to move into a spacious Gold Coast brownstone she’s been renting with two other girls closer to Bobbi’s age, our protagonist jumps at the chance. She meets her other roommates - the quiet Ella and the more outgoing Ivy. Barbara, the building’s larger-than-life landlady, welcomed Bobbi with open arms, and so did the roommates. As Bobbi adjusts to her new surroundings, she faces challenges at work and in her personal life, as her ex-boyfriend, Charlie, is determined to draw her back into a bad relationship, while Oliver, her co-worker and long-time friend, seems interested in getting closer than friendship.
That is a decent set-up - and, indeed, Wilson manages to do some good things with it. Bobbi is a flawed character - a bit airheaded, struggling to be assertive and frustratingly oblivious to obvious foreshadowing - but she also has positive qualities. Bobbi is willing to take an awkward intern under her wing without any ulterior motives. To touch on something ceilidh_ann talked about in length on the Book Lantern, Bobbi doesn't do the whole "I'm not pretty except I totally am." She knows she's pretty - she just has realistic doubts and insecurities. And, occasional moments of obliviousness aside, she isn’t self-absorbed, and she does care about her friends. One can see why Oliver would be drawn to her warm, cheerful presence.
Speaking of Oliver - he isn’t a bad character, either. At first, he doesn’t seem like he takes much of anything seriously, but the novel later shows him as being driven and focused on pursuing his passion. Oliver can be series when situation called for it. Kind of reminds me of Augie from USA Network’s Covert Affairs.
Another thing I liked about the book is its depiction of the relationship between Bobbi and Charlie. It’s pretty clear from the get-go that it’s not a healthy relationship. Charlie keeps telling Bobbi that he’ll stop cheating on her, but he has no desire to actually change - and he thinks his charisma is enough to keep Bobbi pliant. While Bobbi has feelings for him, by the beginning of the book, she recognizes that love can’t solve everything, and the relationship has to end. You don’t see that a lot in books. And I liked the fact that she struggled with her feelings for a good portion of the book - it may not be the best reaction, but it’s realistic.
If the other aspects of the book were as good, it would’ve been a different review. But unfortunately, the positives are vastly overshadowed by its many, many flaws.
Let’s start with rest of the cast. I can understand the other four girls at Barbara’s house not getting as much attention as Bobbi - they’ll get their own books. But that’s no excuse for giving them so little characterization. By the end of the book, we don’t really know a whole lot about them. Meryl is an Artsy Person With a Trust Fund Who Does Vaguely Artsy Things. Ivy’s is the party-hopping, sexually adventurous one. Ella is the quiet, reserved one who seems to exist primarily to be Ivy’s foil. That’s pretty much. They feel more like walking stereotypes than living, breathing human beings with ideas, passions and experiences of their own.. By the end of the book, we get some idea of what Meryl wants and what drives her (using her fortune on causes she’s passionate about), but Ivy and Ella don’t even get that.
Wilson spills a lot of proverbial ink writing about how Bobbie was gradually accepted into the group of roommates and how she felt like they belonged. But that never really rings true. We never really see them become comfortable with each other, bond over anything, or do anything that might suggest they might be becoming friendly. Even when they supposedly bonded, their interactions don’t really change.
Meryl and Bobbi, at least, felt like they were friends. But even there, Wilson could’ve given their interaction more depth and dimension.
As for Barbara… She’s one of those larger than life Gold Coast socialites that have been around for decades, seen things most of us can’t imagine and would love to share their life-experiences if asked. It’s a sort of character that almost can’t help but be compelling and interesting. But that doesn’t change the fact that she exists to give sage advice and help the girls out. While Wilson did try to give her some depth when she talks about her deceased husband, Barbara ultimately feels more like a plot device than a character. Her advice seems more like lectures or excerpts from self-help books than something an actual person would say. In the end, her function could’ve just as easily been fulfilled by an Oprah-type talk show host the characters see on TV. Or an actual self-help book.
But at the end, the biggest flaws of the book have to do with the quality of the prose itself. The phrase “Show, don’t tell” gets thrown around a lot in writing critique, but people sometimes lose track of what it actually means. It’s not enough to say a character felt something - a writer needs to show how those feelings affect their reactions and perceptions. It’s not enough to say a character is brilliant - a writer needs to show how they’re brilliant. Otherwise, the writing comes off as shallow and under-developed.
It’s not that Wilson doesn’t know this rule. There are times when she seems to remember it. But she forgets it far more often than not. Even with Bobbie, Wilson spends far too much time telling her what she feels instead of delving into how she feels.
A lot of the writing just seems plain unpolished. By the time I was about 1/5 of the way through, I really wished I could go through the entire book with a red pen, pointing out awkwardly constructed sentences, parts that were just unclear… to say nothing of all of the missing punctuation marks, spacing errors and grammar errors. I’m not sure how the editing process worked for Shy Town Girls, but as Kelly Thompson and Randi will tell you, even with the most rigorous editing, some errors will slip through. But whoever edited Shy Town Girls didn’t seem to have even bothered with the “rigorous” part.
Ultimately, what we have is a disconnect between interesting ideas and the skill level required to pull it off. The concept for the Shy Town Girls was sound, but I don’t think Wilson is good enough writer to pull it off. At least not yet. A lot of the flaws I described are mistakes all writers make when they start out. Wilson is a published author, but as far as I can tell, this is her first work of fiction. Maybe, with more practice and feedback, she would be able to improve.
Part of me is kind of curious to see the next three books. Maybe Yih and Leimkuehler will turn out to be better writers. But honestly, getting though Book 1 became such a chore toward the end that I’m not particularly keen to wade into the series again.
(I didn’t mention Clinesmith because, since the publication of Book 1, she seems to have dropped out of the project. All references to her have been purged from Shy Town Girls’ official website - down to awkwardly cropping her out of the authors photo.)
The experience with Shy Town Girls hasn’t shaken my faith in Today’s Chicago Woman’s editorial judgment… much. All and all, it’s still a good publication. I just won’t accept their recommendations quite as blindly next time.
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The review copy of the book was obtained from the Chicago Public Library system. Shy Town Girls (Book 1) is available on Amazon in Kindle and hard copy format.