She's Gone Country [Porter]

Book: She's Gone Country
Author: Jane Porter

Review: After her husband of 16 years leaves her for a man, 39 year old former model Shey moves her 3 sons (ages 12, 14 and 15) from their comfortable NYC life to her childhood home in a small Texas town (population less than a 100 people). Shey struggles to understand the demise of her marriage and feelings for an old high school crush while mothering her children who are having trouble adjusting to the many changes in their lives.

A quick, easy read, this book was okay. Shey's modeling background was incredibly unrealistic (she was discovered after college when she was 22 and started having kids at age 24...and within those 2 years she became the Sports Illustrated cover model twice and traveled around the world...doubt that would actually happen). Her financial situation wasn't exactly clear either-she and her estranged husband were paying $90k a year in private school tuition for their children and lived in Manhattan. Shey was working on an Oxygen show about modeling, wrote a book, and had a number of projects in the works. I guess she quit "everything" to move back home and had zero income coming in? Seems unrealistic. She also claims the public school in her hometown with a population of less than a 100 people was 'pretty good' which seems doubtful. I felt her decision to move her home, while good for her, was a selfish move on her kids behalf. NYC is a big place and she could have moved to a different area of the city, kept the kids near their father (whom she admits throughout the book was a great, hands on dad) and kept them in a top notch school.

Overall-even with the unrealistic scenarios mentioned above, I still enjoyed this.

Grade: B-