MOMZILLAS PB

by Jill Kargman

Paperback. Pub Date :2007-07-16 288 English HarperCollins UK If you thought Wall Street was cut-throat. wait till to you meet the Kelly bag-toting. Chanel-wearing. Bugaboo-pushing mothers of New York's Upper East Side ... ' malaise of the extremely wealthy; symptoms include panic over which color Bugaboo to buy and night sweats about which 15.000 pre-pre-school to apply to.' Hannah adores her husband Josh. so when he gets offered a fabulous job in Manhattan. shes happy to abandon their cozy West Coast life for the social whirl of the Big Apple.But motherhood in Manhattan is a whole different ball-game - in fact. for the bored and pampered women of New York's wealthiest families. it's practically an Olympic sport.In a world where who you know and how you look is everything. Hannah finds herself adrift in a sea of ??'Reximoms (mothers who ...

Genres: Chick Lit, Fiction, New York, Adult Fiction, Humor, Romance, Beach Reads

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Jill Kargman is deathly afraid of clowns. And mimes. Wait, mimes are worse. She lives in New York City where she writes magazine articles and trashy novels and enjoys wrap sandwiches. She is the author of teen books Bittersweet Sixteen, Summer Intern, and Jet Set, plus some excellent grown-up books. And by grown-up books she doesn't mean porn; she means not young adult but plain old adult. Her articles have appeared in Vogue, Teen Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, Travel + Leisure, Elle, Elle Décor, and a bunch of British magazines you've never seen. She went to Yale where she did not study writing and has three children who keep her young. And exhausted.

Reviews

[Sarah]

I just bailed on page 16 due to the use of the word "unfortch." As you know, there are clearly NO extenuating circumstances ("circs") that excuse diction ("dictch") like that. I'd also like you to know that, before I even arrived at that misbegotten page, I sat, in the name of a warm backporch summer evening just crying out for noninvasive reading material, through the following:

"her skeletore bod" (you can't even get a reference to He-Man spelled right?!),

"racquetball-playing Roman-numeraled peeps,"

and, God help us,

"It was also awky because I'm really a girls' girl and not one to bond with the boys; I have never been dicks over chicks. With Bee, convo seemed forced."

Not to even mention "But this woman was not just a thorn in my side, she was a full My name is Inigo Montoya-hand -carved spear bisecting my bod." (What does that mean? Why do you make really basic pop culture references you don't even understand? Who are you and why are you?)

And, because I just couldn't leave it alone, I scanned further down on page 17:

"cold hard ca$hola." With a dollar sign. Oh my God! And "bulk o' his dough"! Close the book! Close the book!

I challenge anyone to find a worse page than this in English. Seriously, I do. But instead of emailing me, just tear it out mail it to a country that's beating us in the space race or whatever race we're in, because as we all know, global intelligence allotment is a zero-sum game.

JESUS CHRIST she thanks Britney Spears-Federline in the acknowledgments under "To the mellow moms: thank you for helping me laugh at the Momzillas, for sharing insane anecdotes, and showing me how it's done." I'm actually crying, and not just because of the lack of parallelism; I have to go. I have to get this out of my house, maybe even my neighborhood.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book would be a witty take on wealthy Manhattan moms and all their uber-materialistic ways, but it ended up taking itself way too seriously, and wasn't funny at all. Do yourself a favor and don't read this book.

[Kim-Lost-In-A-Book · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing is awful, the made up words are terrible. Seriously, who talks like that? Although after reading the acknowledgements, I guess the author does. Bad editing, too many typos to count (and that didn't include the words that I wasn't sure if it was bad editing or just another made up word, I chalked it up to the latter). The story is okay, the telling of the story is just so bad. The main character doesn't even get that she's just as bad as the Upper East Side Momzillas that she's bashing through out the entire book. And then in the final few pages she becomes the heroine and we see that she's taught others of their wicked ways because she's so much better than the other Mothers and they should all be just like her instead. Also far too many pop culture references. The author is clearly trying too hard. If you read the final two chapters, that's all you'll need and it will sound like the rest of the book was really good. She's made these self revelations and learned so much about the other Mothers and parenting and even about herself. However, if you'd read the rest of the book, the unfortunate part is that those final two chapters are so fake, it's hard to believe that Hannah has really learned anything at all because of her behavior and the way she clearly sees that she and her child are far superior to these Momzillas and their children (who she claims have superiority complexes), that her revelations and life lessons are such bull.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Occasionally amusing but not great. The story didn't really go anywhere, and the character seemed a little naive. The end wrapped up in record time - it was like the author thought, "Ok, this book is __ pages now, so I'd better end this thing. What should I do? How about this and this and this?" Kind of fun to read, but it really left me feeling like I wasted my time, and I rarely feel that way about anything I read (I'm not very discriminating!).

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars ⭐️

[Kimmy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave up on this one. I was 25% in to the book and literally nothing had happened. The writing was really grating and I felt like everything the narrator said was just some variation of, "This woman did this, isn't she terrible? Here's what I did instead that makes me morally superior." The whole book just really read as some bitchy woman trying to prove to you that she's less bitchy than the women surrounding her. Generally just really boring and unappealing,

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

since this was the only book I had with me during a recent train ride, I gave it a try. this is exactly the kind of crappy "literature" that gives chick-lit a bad name. The writing was atrocious, her slang usage and ridiculously ill-fitting pop culture references were laughable, but not in a good way. complete and utter suckage.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay story...predictable. What made it difficult for me to get through was the tone of the narrator/main character. She speaks as if she is in high school ("convo", "fam", etc.) so it was hard to take her seriously. If it wasn't so slangy, it would be much better.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seriously.
Okay a dictionary of type of moms. However there are a lot of made up words and no indication of what they actually mean.
The personality contracts clash a lot and do not make for good writing. Especially when this novel has been poorly written. However unlike other novels I have recently read that I rated poorly at least this one the story was easier to follow.

[Sarah Lewites · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read most of this while sitting in the car repair place paying 900 something dollars feeling sorry for myself. It was fine.

[Leah Rehman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book barely had a plot and the writing was very random in some cases

[Kaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tone of this book is fantastic!
I adore the show "Odd Mom Out," which is based on this book! It pointed out a lot of issues that all of us struggle with - feeling accepted, having a friend group, knowing who we are, going through periods of losing our identity- even if we don't live on the upper east side.

For a highly entertaining book, it addressed some more "serious" topics.

[Melanie McCluskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine Gossip Girl grew up, Miranda Hobbes became a stay-at-home mom, and Juno kept her baby. Mix these characters’ worlds together and you’re hanging out with Hannah Allen, the sympathetic heroine of Momzillas.

Add the slick, stylized tone of chick-lit classics like Shopaholic Ties the Knot and Baby Proof, and the resulting literary concoction is Jill Kargman’s Momzillas: It’s a Jungle out there on Park Avenue, Baby.

At-home mother Hannah, her investment-banker husband Josh, and their 2-year-old daughter Violet have relocated from San Francisco to New York City’s Upper East Side. After some prodding from her materialistic mother-in-law, Hannah loads Violet into the stroller and runs smack into the most vicious strain of mothers in America: the Momzillas of Manhattan.

Chronicling this stay-at-home mom’s move to moneyed Manhattan and her struggles to fit in with a gossipy clique of over-achieving mothers, Momzillas is an easy-to-read paperback pleasure that feels guilty but never actually induces the mommy guilt. As a less-than-perfect, all-too-human mother, Hannah is definitely no one’s martyr even though she feels an outsider’s pain.

Although the heroines and villains of Momzillas are stay-at-home moms, Kargman writes sensitively about the choices all new moms must make. She diplomatically covers the maternal controversies of breastfeeding, childcare, returning to work, and how much to spend on a little one’s toys, clothes and entertainment.

Many of Hannah’s days and nights in New York are lonely and depressing as she rides the rollercoaster of emotions that goes along with trying to find your place after uprooting your family and moving across the country. But Kargman offers a light, entertaining touch, with as much pop-culture lingo as a movie like Juno, and even includes a glossary to explain the native tongue.

New mothers across a range of geographical and socioeconomic levels will appreciate Momzillas, for the same reasons that a diverse horde of millions relate to Sex and the City’s aspirational characters.

Of course, the Momzillas bubble that Kargman has re-created does seem a bit too carefully constructed at times. Conveniently, all of the main characters are only children, and more than once I asked myself why Hannah doesn’t just pick up the phone and call her own mom in Seattle for sympathy when the going gets tough.

But overall, this glossy glimpse into malicious mommyhood is a light-hearted summer read, a pure pop confection of playground frenemies, preschool anxieties, and perfectly pressed professional nannies.

[Alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Momzillas

Rough. This is no strong female lead. Hannah is almost cripplingly insecure and extremely hypocritical. One chapter ends with major judgement about how spoiled UES kids are, and when she's invited to a lecture about affluenza in the following chapter, she declares it all bullshit. She's (justifiably) disdainful of the judgmental upper crust, so goes to a mom group in Brooklyn - and is just as judgmental as the women she claims to hate. She has zero appreciation for the strain her husband (working 12-16 hour days) must be under and is constantly plagued by resentment toward him, while engaging in some mental infatuation with the most pretentious art history professor chick-lit has ever known (and given what a trope that is, that's saying a lot).

She claims to be a "girls-girl" about 15 times, but doesn't seem to connect with any of the women she's meeting - nor does she give them a chance: 75% of scenes/chapters end with Hannah whisking herself, her child, or both, away from any social situation that isn't 100% smooth sailing. I'm not sure if the author knows of any other way to end a scene. Moreover, Hannah is supposed to be smart, and she sort of dances around the idea that the social circle she's fallen into are mean girls, but it isn't until page 261 that she "figures out" that the main ringleader has hated her from the jump. We didn't need the blurbs of text message conversations to glean that, and neither did Hannah. Out of 280 pages, we spent about 263 with the most negative and insecure protagonist with the worst attitude.

The last few pages are bows bows bows wrapping everything up tidily and happily - if those pages had been expanded, demonstrating HOW Hannah came to terms and how everyone found peace and happiness, I wouldn't have been so tremendously annoyed by it. Alas, it stank. This book is a complete and total vanity project for an extremely privileged and well-connected Upper East Sider, and it shows. 2 stars for readability.

[Nitrorockets · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sure it was interesting and there were some things I could relate to in regard to the insanity of competitive mothering. Hello life in a big city. However there was not much character development as I expected. The book was written from the main character's perspective, almost as if she were telling you the story herself, perhaps a glimpse of her journal. Although not nearly as interesting. I was not interested in this character because she was not personable. I couldn't relate to her nor connect to her. She lacked that development to pull me in to be interested enough to care what happened to her. There was much skimming in this book, I become bored and have to move on somehow. It is about elitist stay at home mothers in NY City, some of which remind me of the shallow popular girls from high school, and a woman with not enough courage to tell people to take a hike when they blatantly insult her in public.

Lesson learned if you read this book: As a parent do not fall into the trap of comparing your child to those of your peers. You will not need any help making yourself crazy your child can do that alone. Once you begin the comparison then you have begun to fail as a parent.

And: Stay away from catty moms. They were the catty girls in high school and they will be just as mean now. Only now it will towards you and your child.

[Csutton624 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very funny in the intro - the mommy definitions. I did laugh out loud at many of them. And the entire book was very chick lit....but it got to be a bit annoying and some of her lingo was trying to hard.

The main character, Hannah, was great at first, but then I wanted to give her a swift kick in the rear - pull it together and speak up! She was a silent character when the "villian" Bee was being awful. And, I did freel Hannah became a bit granola like - who wears black jeans anymore? I mean...come one, I can't see that in the past 10 years. And, she needed to open her mouth - I have a problem when authors make their main characters the silent, let-me-get-walked-all-over type. And...there was a bit of slang/acronyms for sure.

BUt I will say, it was a super quick read and given I'm a new mom, fun for me to read and related to in some aspects. And I like easy to read books at this point in my life!

[Mirjam · Rating 1 out of 5]

hmmmmm...rich, educated white chick is moved by her hedge fund husband from Berkeley to New York, where she tries to fit in with a group of women who are similarly educated but richer and whiter. Hilarity, unfortunately, does not ensue. But there is plenty of whining about how privileged and WASP-Y everyone is, and passage after passage in which the author explains via cutesy anecdotes that she is, really, a much hipper (she takes HER kid to the MOMA!) and also warmer, fuzzier, & more approachable mom(she lets her kid watch Sesame Street, eats Chef Boyardee, wears jeans and t-shirts instead of kitten heels to the park, and - gasp! - watches her own child instead of having the nanny do it) than all of the "momzillas" populating the Upper East Side, even though she and her husband have a house-hunting budget of only one-point-five.

Million.

And yes, she is delightfully unaware of the irony of it all.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, which I was skeptical about when reading some of the reviews. I actually listened to it on CD to and from work, which was a great way to do it, because some of the snarky little comments and cliffhangers really made the time fly. There are a lot of quirky little sayings ("natch" for naturally, for example), which some reviewers didn't like because they don't hear people talking like that, but people DO talk like that in some places. I thought it was a fun read (listen). I loved the happy ending, I hated all the right people and cheered on all the right people. And the heroine got to be who she really was, which is what we all really want to do. Great summer light reading!

[Rachael Nichols Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was under no impression that this was going to be a great work of literature. I knew it was suppose to be a funny, quick read about a mom trying to fit in with the high society moms of New York. However, I couldn’t even enjoy this as just a simple comedy because the main character is so unlikeable. She portrays the other moms as mean spirited and only concerned with superficial, silly things- yet she herself constantly uses words like ‘awky’, ‘natch’, ‘diff’, ‘mag’, and, possibly the worst, ‘neighb’. In the end, everyone in this book was annoying.

[Kourtney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not get past the horrible lingo to get into this story - if there was a story...was the whole plot "I moved to NY and don't fit in"??? I'd pass on this one and wish I had read the reviews before I bought it. Unless you like reading about how "awky" things are for the main character or that she paid 75 "smacks" for something then maybe this book is for you. Given I'm not a 14 year old from the year 2000 this book was not for me

[Jenn Brunet · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is terrible. She actually used the R word to describe herself as an idiot.

The writing is horrible, I can’t believe someone published this.

Edit: so I continued to read because I have a thing about not finishing books.

She uses tons of made up words like « Riddic » instead of ridiculous


One passage where she’s complaining about lyrics on a show her daughter is watching reads. «  fear-o? Nice try, guys. C’on people, can’t we find a real word? »

Dude. No.

[Ann Rumberger · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was fairly terrible. I don't recommend it. I'm giving it 1 star because it wasn't the worst book ever. Decided to read it when I heard it was being turned into a television series. I kept reading it only because it was an easy read, it was short and needed to find out how it ended. Everything wrapped up a little too nicely.

[Samantha Nemeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author has received rave reviews for Odd Mom Out on Bravo so I thought I would read one of her books but I should have heeded others here on goodreads. The use of shortened and slang words such as "natch," "yummy mummies," and "smacks" were extremely distracting and annoying. The book's arc is exactly what you would expect. A quick read that I don't recommend.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

The vocabulary in this book horrific. My language loving heart died a little every time she called something a "sitch" instead of situation. Oh and the intense need to edit the copy was oh, so powerful.

I powered through and focused on the entertainment of it all. It was cliche but an entertaining read.

[Kristi (OneBookMore) · Rating 2 out of 5]

OMG. So very bad. I skimmed the last 4 chapters or so, because I couldn't take it. I thought it would be a fun, cheesy read, but it was just not an interesting story. Maybe it's because I had already been a stay-at-home mama for a few years before I read it, but I just couldn't relate to the main character and her city lifestyle. PASS.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very light read that gave me an escape from my daily life. The moms of NYC featured in this book have a very different lifestyle than I do. I appreciated Hannah and her approach to motherhood, marriage, and society.

[Melissa (Semi Hiatus Until After the Holidays) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good moments about competitive moms in NYC.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, I just want to go live in the woods and give my kids sticks to play with after reading this book.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars - ok+. It is a struggle to find anyone who is likeable in this book.

[Missy McFadden · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was predictable. Some of the slang that was used was terrible. The writing was pretty meh