As Long As It’s Perfect: A Novel

Stay-at-home-mom Janie Margolis is tired of her house. It’s a perfectly nice house, in a friendly neighborhood, but Janie firmly believes it’s time to upgrade–to a bigger, fancier house in the better part of town. Finding the perfect home proves challenging, so she and her husband, Wim, choose a location instead, then knock down the existing house and plan their dream home from the ground up. Flush with cash from Wim’s finance job and brimming with enthusiasm, Janie goes on a design bender, driving the project to ever more luxurious heights–even as the economy and her marriage are crashing down around her. In too deep to simply back out of the project, Janie faces the prospect of losing everything she values–including the home that’s put it all at risk.

Fans of HGTV, design magazines, and home tours will find much to drool over as Janie labors over floor plans and selects furniture, flooring, and tile. But along with the voyeuristic, home-obsessed fun is a shadow of genuine unease. Janie can’t stop spending, even when all logic demands she do so; eventually, her uncontrollable abandon becomes frustrating and worrisome, her own bad decisions compounding the country-wide financial devastation that’s beyond her control. Homeowners will finish this novel with a shudder.