Eugenie Olson, Love in the Time of Taffeta

Love in the Time of Taffeta

Eugenie Olson

Avon, April 2006, $12.95

ISBN: 0060815442

Photographer Iley Gilbert feels depressed, as recent decisions she made turned out bad for her career. Needing to make some money, she accepts a job as a prom assistant during the prom season. Her married boss William is a hunk, and though she knows better, she cannot resist the handsome William and soon they have an affair.

Iley knows the tryst with William is a nowhere street and needs to end it, but she cannot bring herself to do so. As the prom season continues Iley finds herself drawn to a bad girl waif who appears at each prom they shoot. She decides to help the teen, but in doing so Iley begins to help herself, starting with ending her affair and finding her lost photographic muse. She even has hopes to find a true love, single that is, as the spiraling downward cycle seems ended.

As Iley makes one dumb decision after another, fans after awhile will hiss her, as no one should be that hedonistically pathetic. Still in spite of readers unable to empathize with her needs, she is a fascinating character who, the out of character ending aside, seems unable to stop herself as she dives head first into one mistake after another. Eugenie Olson paints a picture of a woman who is her own worst enemy.