Review: The Lonely Hearts Club by Brenda Janowitz

From the beloved author of Scot On The Rocks and Jack With A Twist comes a new novel about just what it means to follow the music of your own heart. 

Jo Waldman lives life to her own soundtrack—working for her father by day while pursuing her music career in NYC’s downtown clubs at night. Music is her passion, along with her boyfriend, Jesse, who shares her dreams of making it big. Jo's old band, The Lonely Hearts Club, came thisclose to getting a huge recording contract, and she’s just biding her time, waiting for lightning to strike twice. The music business is tough, but so is Jo.

So when Jo's father fires her and Jesse breaks up with her, Jo doesn’t get upset—she just wants to rage. Dusting off her computer, and typing in the familiar address for the Lonely Hearts Club's old blog, Jo writes an entry, pouring her heart out about the shortcomings of love. Nobody visits the site anymore, so it's a safe place for Jo to vent. Except that the site sends a mass e-mail to the entire Lonely Hearts mailing list, notifying them that there's a fresh message on the site, so now everybody she's ever met knows that Jo has been brutally dumped. All Jo wants to do is hide under the covers, but to her surprise, supportive comments start flowing in—most from screen names she doesn't even recognize. Jo soon becomes an icon for all things “anti-love.”

There's only one problem: the web programmer helping Jo with her anti-love site is too damned cute! Jo's never been very good at depriving herself of anything, but if the budding relationship with her web programmer is exposed, she'll be revealed as a total fraud and risk losing all of the people who have grown to love and trust her. So is it time to start singing love songs, or time to pick up the guitar and return to the hard rock that almost got The Lonely Hearts signed in the first place? Jo's got some big decisions to make, and it looks like she's going to have to take one step closer to doing something she never thought she'd do--becoming a grownup.

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A native New Yorker, Brenda Janowitz has had a flair for all things dramatic since she played the title role in her third grade production of Really Rosie. When asked by her grandmother if the experience made her want to be an actress when she grew up, Brenda responded, “An actress? No. A writer, maybe.”

Brenda attended Cornell University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Human Service Studies, with a Concentration in Race and Discrimination. After graduating from Cornell, she attended Hofstra Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review and won the Law Review Writing Competition. Upon graduation from Hofstra, she went to work for the law firm Kaye Scholer, LLP, where she was an associate in the Intellectual Property group, handling cases in the areas of trademark, anti-trust, internet, and false advertising. Brenda later left Kaye Scholer to pursue a federal clerkship with the Honorable Marilyn Dolan Go, United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of New York.

Since her clerkship, Brenda has worked as a career counselor at two New York City law schools, where she published a number of articles on career related issues in publications such as the National Law Journal and the New York Law Journal. She currently lives in Manhattan where she lectures on the publishing process and teaches creative writing at Mediabistro.

Brenda is the author of JACK WITH A TWIST (Engaging your adversary and other things they don’t teach you in law school) and SCOT ON THE ROCKS (How I survived my ex-boyfriend's wedding with my dignity ever so slightly intact). You can learn more about Brenda at www.brendajanowitz.comand http://www.brendajanowitz.blogspot.com/

Wow, just WOW.  Janowitz writes what a breakup feels like at the core...the pain, the sadness and the disbelief.  But she does so with a main female character that is both strong and weak, determined and disheartened, wonderful and flawed.  Janowitz captured ans fleshed out a great lead that did not need to be a damsel in distress, but a woman out to turn things around on her own accord.  Rock on Janowitz, rock on!!!!  5 stars