EASY ON THE EYES
Jane Porter
5 Spot
Fiction
ISBN: 9780446509404
Tania Tomlinson leads a very glamorous life. As the host of “America Tonight,” she enjoys the many perks her celebrity assures --- huge salary, wardrobe, invites to premieres, even the occasional handsome admirer. But in a town founded on image and appearance, Tania is learning that she needs to look beneath the surface if she wants to find true happiness.
Seven years earlier, Tania was a newlywed, married to a dashing television war reporter. A few months after their wedding, her husband Keith was killed in Afghanistan, leaving behind a grieving wife who had to reinvent her purpose in life. This was not the first time Tania had weathered tragedy. At 14, her family was involved in a horrible car crash. Tania survived, but her parents and sister were killed. A deeply felt guilt is never far from her thoughts when she thinks of her family: “I was fourteen when everything changed. Fourteen when I learned that life is precarious and death just a shadow beyond our doorstep. We’d just spent the day at the beach and were driving home. I was mad at the time, I forget why, and wasn’t talking to anyone. But I remember being mad, remember saying over and over beneath my breath that I hated them all, that I couldn’t wait for my real life to begin…and then in one instant it all changed.”
After paying her dues at local TV stations, Tania was plucked out of hundreds of hopefuls to be the host of the nightly entertainment program “America Tonight,” and soon she had the world at her feet. But despite all the glitz and glam, she can’t help feeling that there’s something still missing. Not quite over Keith, she realizes she needs a true, stable love in her life. Her much younger actor boyfriend Trevor is a nice distraction, but not a life partner. Besides, Tania is pretty sure he’s secretly sleeping with his co-star. Why must men behave that way? Why can’t there be more men like Keith, who are honest and trustworthy, and willing to die for what they believe in? Instead, she keeps running into jerks like Michael O’Sullivan, the uber-confident celebrity plastic surgeon who is never seen without that cocksure grin on his face. He seems to be everywhere she is lately.
Work used to bring Tania solace, but even that is a battlefield lately when her boss gives her a not-so-veiled ultimatum to get plastic surgery to increase her numbers with a younger audience or make way for her new co-host, the annoyingly perky and journalistically ignorant Shelby. What’s even worse is that she gave Shelby her first job in the industry. Now she was looming down her thirty-something neck like a buzzard circling a carcass. Tania realizes that she must get off the merry-go-round to better assess her life and where it’s headed before it’s too late.
Jane Porter is a master of the buoyant, blissful read, often incorporating issues that almost all women face in a highly readable way. EASY ON THE EYES is not as strong or as exuberant as her earlier novels, like MRS. PERFECT and ODD MOM OUT (where Tania is a periphery character). Tania’s burdens are heavy-hearted, serious ones, and her career woes about her TV hosting gig aren’t as relatable as the harried working moms she normally writes about. Still, this is a breezy read about the entertainment industry and its never-ending fascination with youth and beauty.
--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller
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