Call Waiting

by Dianne Blacklock

Overview

Of course Meg was a success: she planned, she set goals, she made lists. Ally never made lists.

Ally Tasker is trapped in a dead-end teaching job and a relationship that's going nowhere. Her college friend Meg has a fabulous job in advertising, a doting husband and a gorgeous baby boy. Why did Ally's life seem to be permanently on hold?

When her grandfather and sole relative dies, Ally has to return to the Southern Highlands. As she sets to restoring the rundown home of her childhood, the past unravels, and Ally realises the choice to be happy has been in her hands all along.

Meanwhile Meg's life is not as idyllic as Ally imagines. She longs to inject more passion and spontaneity into her life, but at what cost to her career, and more importantly, to the people she loves most in the world?

Sometimes you have to risk all you have to realise what is worth saving.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940155037262
Publisher:	Dianne Blacklock
Publication date:	12/17/2017
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	506 KB

About the Author

Dianne Blacklock has been a teacher, trainer, counsellor, check-out chick, and even one of those annoying market researchers you avoid in shopping malls. Nowadays she tries not to annoy anyone by staying home and writing.

Editorial Reviews

Ally Tasker and Meg Lynch, best friends since art school, are searching for "happily ever afters" but turning up complications instead in Australian novelist Blacklock's bright American debut. Blacklock develops her likable characters in some depth while making wry observations on the difficulties inherent in any married or "singlet" life. Ally, wary of relationships and stubbornly independent, has just ended a long affair with Bryce, her driven but dull real estate agent boyfriend ("Success comes in cans, not can'ts!"). About to turn 35 ("surely the most desolate of all ages"), Ally begins to think she might be happier if her life looked more like ad executive Meg's-with a stable marriage, career and child. Meg, on the other hand, envies Ally's freedom, especially after Ally leaves Sydney for the rugged Southern Highlands to prepare her grandfather's estate for sale. Meg dabbles in infidelity with a hot young model and gets more excitement than she bargained for when her husband moves out. Ally meets Matt, a carpenter and contractor with a teenage daughter. He's handsome and charming, but he also has the nerve to be helpful and concerned when Ally just wants to be left alone. Lively, always believable dialogue and vivid descriptions of Sydney and the surrounding countryside give the pleasantly predictable plot some added oomph. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Lackluster chick-lit from Down Under. Ally Tasker tosses her cell phone out the window rather than listen to dull-as-dishwater boyfriend Bryce drone on about another golden real-estate opportunity in Sydney. Ally is ready to reinvent her life from top to bottom, starting with dumping him after five years of boredom. As for teaching art at St. Ambrose's school-well, the thrill is gone, especially since some politically correct types frowned on her latest project (having the kids make their own didgeridoos is tantamount to exploitation of Aborigines, couldn't she see that?). Well, she can read the writing on the wall: She's going nowhere, compared to best friend Meg. Meg does computer graphics for an ad agency when not being a perfect wife and mother to her loving husband and young son or obsessively cleaning the charming harborside cottage that Ally helped decorate. Meg agrees that Ally must move on, but first they absolutely have to watch an upcoming movie marathon of every chick flick ever made, followed by a few talk-show snifflefests. Then Ally hightails it out of Sydney to see to her late grandfather's estate and meets Matt Serrano, a hunky contractor with a heart of gold, who listens patiently to her life story. Could Ally's mother actually have loved her? Drugs make people do appalling things, Matt points out. Why was her grandfather so remote? Men of his generation often had trouble expressing their feelings, says Matt. Segue to Meg, whose life (surprise) isn't perfect after all. The excitement's gone out of her marriage-and now will she or won't she fool around with sexy Jamie from the agency? She feels like a fool sitting around waiting for him to call. What would Ally think? Oh,dear: Meg will just have to pick up that cell phone and pour her heart out. Meanwhile, Matt and Ally have sex at last.

Kirkus Reviews