
If You Were Here
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Jamie Heinlein
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By:
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Jen Lancaster
About this listen
The fiction debut of the New York Times best-selling author of My Fair Lazy. Told in the uproariously entertaining voice readers have come to expect from Jen Lancaster, If You Were Here follows Amish-zombie-teen- romance author Mia and her husband Mac (and their pets) through the alternately frustrating, exciting, terrifying - but always funny - process of buying and renovating their first home in the Chicago suburbs that John Hughes's movies made famous.
Along their harrowing renovation journey, Mia and Mac get caught up in various wars with the homeowners' association, meet some less-than-friendly neighbors, and are joined by a hilarious cast of supporting characters, including a celebutard ex- landlady. As they struggle to adapt to their new surroundings - with Mac taking on the renovations himself - Mia and Mac will discover if their marriage is strong enough to survive months of DIY renovations.
©2011 Jen Lancaster (P)2011 PenguinListeners also enjoyed...
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Readers and listeners have followed Jen Lancaster through job loss, sucky city living, weight loss attempts, and 1980s nostalgia. Now Jen chronicles her efforts to achieve cultural enlightenment, with some hilarious missteps and genuine moments of inspiration along the way. And she does so by any means necessary: reading canonical literature, viewing classic films, attending the opera, researching artisan cheeses, and even enrolling in etiquette classes to improve her social graces.
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Disappointing ... Both Narration and Story
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Hilarious Commentary on Weight Loss!
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Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older, but not wiser, Lancaster goes back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting high with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she'd tell if she met you in a bar... if she weren't too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she's you, only louder.
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self absorbed
- By D D H on 06-15-19
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She Always Makes Me Laugh
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How fast can charity fundraiser CeCe Barclay’s unimpeachable society life come tumbling down? One minute she’s speaking before Chicago’s glitterati. The next, her financier husband is wanted for embezzlement. Her assets seized and her fall mortifyingly public, CeCe grasps for refuge—and employment—as a sorority housemom at Eli Whitney University, her daughter Hayden’s alma mater.
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Had potential, but fell flat
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Actuary Penny Sinclair has a head for business, and she always makes rational decisions. Knowing that 60 percent of spouses cheat and 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, she wasn't too surprised when her husband had an affair. (That he did so with a woman their daughter's age? Well, that part did sting a bit.) She just made sure she got everything in the divorce, including their lovely old Victorian house. And as soon as her younger daughter has her hipster-fabulous wedding in the backyard, she's trading it in for a condo in downtown Chicago....
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Narrator is bland, slow. Story is good.
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By: Jen Lancaster
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My Fair Lazy
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- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jamie Heinlein
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Readers and listeners have followed Jen Lancaster through job loss, sucky city living, weight loss attempts, and 1980s nostalgia. Now Jen chronicles her efforts to achieve cultural enlightenment, with some hilarious missteps and genuine moments of inspiration along the way. And she does so by any means necessary: reading canonical literature, viewing classic films, attending the opera, researching artisan cheeses, and even enrolling in etiquette classes to improve her social graces.
-
-
Disappointing ... Both Narration and Story
- By Jennifer on 05-06-12
By: Jen Lancaster
-
Such a Pretty Fat
- One Narcissist's Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pi e Is Not the Answer
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jamie Heinlein
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To whom the fat rolls...I'm tired of books where a self-loathing heroine is teased to the point where she starves herself skinny in hopes of a fabulous new life. And I hate the message that women can't possibly be happy until we all fit into our skinny jeans. I don't find these stories uplifting; they make me want to hug these women and take them out for fizzy champagne drinks and cheesecake and explain to them that until they figure out their insides, their outsides don't matter.
-
-
Hilarious Commentary on Weight Loss!
- By Sara on 09-21-09
By: Jen Lancaster
-
Stories I'd Tell in Bars
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jen Lancaster, John Fletcher
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older, but not wiser, Lancaster goes back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting high with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she'd tell if she met you in a bar... if she weren't too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she's you, only louder.
-
-
self absorbed
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By: Jen Lancaster
-
Pretty in Plaid
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jamie Heinlein
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Pretty in Plaid, Jen Lancaster reveals how she developed the hubris that perpetually gets her into trouble. Using fashion icons of her youth to tell her hilarious and insightful stories, readers will meet the girl she used to be. Jen Lancaster was a badge-hungry Junior Girl Scout with a knack for extortion, an aspiring sorority girl who didn't know her Coach from her Louis Vuitton, and a budding executive who found herself bewildered by her first encounter with a fax machine.
-
-
She Always Makes Me Laugh
- By Debra Garfinkle on 04-01-13
By: Jen Lancaster
-
Housemoms
- A Novel
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Maria McCann, EJ Lavery, Jeremy Carlisle Parker
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How fast can charity fundraiser CeCe Barclay’s unimpeachable society life come tumbling down? One minute she’s speaking before Chicago’s glitterati. The next, her financier husband is wanted for embezzlement. Her assets seized and her fall mortifyingly public, CeCe grasps for refuge—and employment—as a sorority housemom at Eli Whitney University, her daughter Hayden’s alma mater.
-
-
Had potential, but fell flat
- By Desiree Paulhamus on 01-04-25
By: Jen Lancaster
-
By the Numbers
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Actuary Penny Sinclair has a head for business, and she always makes rational decisions. Knowing that 60 percent of spouses cheat and 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, she wasn't too surprised when her husband had an affair. (That he did so with a woman their daughter's age? Well, that part did sting a bit.) She just made sure she got everything in the divorce, including their lovely old Victorian house. And as soon as her younger daughter has her hipster-fabulous wedding in the backyard, she's trading it in for a condo in downtown Chicago....
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Narrator is bland, slow. Story is good.
- By Dogs & Horses on 07-10-16
By: Jen Lancaster
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The Best of Enemies
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Bridesmaids meets Big Little Lies in a novel told from the alternating perspectives of two women who define the term frenemies - from New York Times best-selling author Jen Lancaster. Jacqueline Jordan knows conflict. A fearless journalist, she’s spent the past decade embedded in the world’s hot spots, writing about the fall of nations and the rise of despots. But if you were to inquire about who topped Jack’s enemy list, she’d not hesitate to answer: Kitty Carricoe.
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Unexpected pleasure with engaging dialgoue
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Jeneration X
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster learned how to come to terms with her body. In My Fair Lazy, she expanded her mind. Now, the New York Times best-selling author gives herself - and her generation - a kick in the X, by facing her greatest challenge to date: acting her age. Jen is finally ready to put away childish things (except her Barbie Styling Head, of course) and embrace the investment-making, mortgage-carrying, life insurance-having adult she's become.
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Super Jen Lancaster Fans Be Warned...
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By: Jen Lancaster
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jen Lancaster is here to take a hard look at our elevating anxieties, and with self-deprecating wit and levelheaded wisdom, she charts a path out of the quagmire that keeps us frightened of the future and ashamed of our imperfectly perfect human lives. Take a deep breath, and her advice, and you just might get through a holiday dinner without wanting to disown your uncle.
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Not relatable
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By: Jen Lancaster
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The Tao of Martha
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One would think that with Jen Lancaster’s impressive list of bestselling self-improvement memoirs that she would have it all together by now. One would be wrong. Jen’s still a little rough around the edges. Suffice it to say, she’s no Martha Stewart. And that is exactly why Jen is going to Martha up and live her life according to the advice of America’s overachieving older sister - the woman who turns lemons into lavender-infused lemonade.
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Not as light as previous books, still witty
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
New York Times best-selling author Jen Lancaster has lived a life based on re-invention and self-improvement. From Bitter Is the New Black to The Tao of Martha, she’s managed to document her (and her generation’s) attempts to shape up, grow up, and have it all - sometimes with disastrous results...Mistakes are one thing; regrets are another. After a girls’ weekend in Savannah makes her realize that she is - yikes! - middle-aged (binge watching is so the new binge drinking), Jen decides to make a bucket list and seize the day.
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The Smug Is Strong With This One
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Performance
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Classic Kinsella story
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Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”
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Joke, joke, joke. Boring, boring, boring.
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Overall
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Performance
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Beginning does not foretell the ending
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Excuse Me While I Disappear
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Laurie Notaro has proved everyone wrong: she didn’t end up in rehab, prison, or cremated at a tender age. She just went gray. At past fifty, every hair’s root is a symbol of knowledge (she knows how to use a landline), experience (she rode in a car with no seat belts), and superpowers (a gray-haired lady can get away with anything). Though navigating midlife is initially upsetting—the cracking noises coming from her new old body, receiving regular junk mail from mortuaries—Laurie accepts it. And then some.
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Meh. Maybe funnier with a different narrator
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The historic hotel in Boonsboro has endured war and peace, the changing of hands, and even rumored hauntings. Now it’s getting a major face-lift from the Montgomery brothers and their eccentric mother. As the architect in the family, Beckett’s social life consists mostly of talking shop over pizza and beer. But there’s another project he’s got his eye on: the girl he’s been waiting to kiss since he was sixteen.
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You need to Set your MP3 Playback to FASTER!
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Tribute
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Finally out of the celebrity spotlight and away from her mother's demands, Cilla is free to do what she loves: fixing up houses for profit. Her current project is personal. The Shenandoah Valley farm house was once the vacation home of Hollywood luminary Janet Hardy, Cilla's grandmother. When Cilla uncovers a stash of her grandmother's private letters, and begins asking questions about the past, she becomes the target of a crazed killer.
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Huh?
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Fresh out of rehab, Mallory Quinn takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy. Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.
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a decent read, sounds like a bunch of haters in the room
- By Kyle B. on 12-24-23
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What listeners say about If You Were Here
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Kelly
- 04-16-12
How is this different from her memoirs?
I really love Jen Lancaster's funny, acerbic memoirs and I was so hoping that her first foray into fiction was going to be just as great. But it reads exactly like one of her memoirs, even down to the footnotes. Let's be real - Mia is Jen, Mac is Fletch, Daisy is Maisy, and her best friend Tracey is Stacey. Even the narrator is exactly the same and sounds just like she does when reading "Bitter is the New Black". I wish Jen had tried to write this in another style. It works really well for memoirs but doesn't translate as well to fiction. Like everything else she's written, it was punchy, fast-paced, and very funny. But I still can't help feeling disappointed.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Barbara
- 02-20-12
Just what I expected
If you could sum up If You Were Here in three words, what would they be?
What I expected
What was one of the most memorable moments of If You Were Here?
When the Japenese business men walked in on her in the bath.
Have you listened to any of Jamie Heinlein’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Can't recall
Any additional comments?
I love Jen Lancaster's attitude and this story is pure Jen.
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- Abby B
- 04-14-16
Ok book by Lancaster, love her memoirs more
I didn't mind the store. Much like her memoirs. But this woman's voice bothered me more than anything. Need a different reader and I might have enjoyed a bit more.
For some reason her "argh" really bothered me. (Trust me there's plenty of them in this book.)
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- Amanda
- 06-18-12
Great listen, perfect for road trip
I was looking for a book that my mother and I could listen to on a road trip. Although we both enjoy audiobooks, we like very different genres. I read the description and thought it sounded like something we both might like. I was right.
The narration is good, she doesn't change her voice too much, especially between the women, but it really didn't both either of us. Most of all, we both laughed out lou several times, it is very funny. She isn't shy to curse, though, so if hearing the F word bothers you, this book probably isn't for you.
I recommend this book to anyone that enjoyed the movie Money Pit and any John Hughes film. We loved it, especially the ending, was really great.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sarah
- 07-03-12
If You Love Jen Lancaster You Will Love Mia!
What did you like best about this story?
I love Jen Lancaster's other books (all nonfiction) her first trip into the fiction genre is awesome! Fiction gave her freedom to fully submit herself and you to the fantasy of your dream house while allowing for bumps and turns in the road to keep you tuned in. While listing to this my boyfriend was happy because i was so into it that he got to play video games because i could not take the ear buds out lol! I hoped you found this helpful and enjoy your listening :D
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1 person found this helpful
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- Carolyn
- 10-28-11
A Jen Lancaster disappointment
I'm a Jen Lancaster fan and I have to say, this book is most unlike her. It's a boring tale of home improvements. It's like listening to a narration of a hundred episodes off HGTV. I'm about 6 hours into it and I've found myself turning it off several times because it was just too difficult to listen to. Actually, that would be an understatement. I have turned it off because it was downright annoying. I've yet to discover the storyline or a plot. If you like to listen about home redecorating and home remodel ad nauseum, this is your book. Otherwise, save your money and your sanity and just find another book :(
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3 people found this helpful
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- Colleen
- 06-18-14
Could not finish it
What would have made If You Were Here better?
This book could have used less sarcasm and less condescension. Try as I might, I could not find one character to care about.
What was most disappointing about Jen Lancaster’s story?
Most of all, the book felt mean-spirited.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
As I listened to the book, I just kept getting more and more depressed and dispirited.
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