Review #75: While We Were Watching Downton Abbey, by Wendy Wax

While We Were Watching Downton Abbey is one of those books that you don't realize how much you like it until you're halfway through. Actually, what I think I enjoyed most about this book were the characters. They stayed with me well after I was finished reading their stories, and now that I've finally getting around to writing my review, I find myself wondering about them like old acquaintances.

The novel follows three very different women and the concierge of a hoity toity Atlanta highrise. I'm so small-town that I didn't know that high end apartment buildings had concierges, so I learned something there. (Also? Concierge is a weird word to type. It just looks weird.) Anyway, Edward (the concierge) organizes a Sunday night viewing party for Downton Abbey, and in doing so, manages to form a strong friendship bond between three very different women: Samantha, a well-to-do but lonely high society wife, empty-nester Claire, who is struggling with her daughter being off at college and determined to write a book, and Brooke, who's a suddenly single mom with two young daughters, and a soon to be ex husband who just happens to live in the same building with his new girlfriend.

Between the viewing parties and Edward's machinations, these three very different women forge an incredibly strong bond. And if they discover themselves, find love, and/or make a certain ex husband's life a little more difficult along the way, well, then that's just icing on the cake.