An Ex to Grind
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The battle of the sexes rages on in this smart, witty, and extremely timely new novel by the phenomenally popular Jane Heller! This time she poses a provocative question: while it's common for "deadbeat" husbands to dodge their alimony payments by nefarious means, what happens when a woman plays by the same fast-and-loose rules?
In An Ex to Grind, Manhattan financial planner Melanie Banks likes being on top. She's addicted to the money, the power, and the success only hard work and long hours can bring. When she first meets and falls in love with pro football player Dan Swain, she admires his work ethic too. But then they get married and his career comes to a screeching halt, and suddenly she's the one bringing home the bacon - and falling out of love with him. In the years - years! - since he last held a job, he's become a paycheck-devouring, couch-sitting mooch, and he likes it that way. And Melanie decides it's time to lose the loser.
Divorce, however, isn't all it's cracked up to be. For starters, Melanie's forced to share custody of Buster, the couple's adorable dog. And married or not, she still has to support the income-less Dan in the princely style to which he's become so infuriatingly accustomed. Whether the overpaid lawyers term it "alimony" or "maintenance," the bad news is that she has to pay it - and keep paying it until death do them part.
But there is one loophole.
If she can dump her ex onto some other unsuspecting female for ninety days and get him to violate their cohabitation clause, she's off the hook - forever.
Sound tricky? Not for Melanie Banks. The first step is to secretly hire Desiree Klein, New York's premier professional matchmaker. It's not long before Desiree supplies Ms. Right (or at least Ms. Right-for-Ninety-Days) and Dan walks straight into the trap. Before Melanie knows it, her lazy ex has a new love, and by the end of the ninety days he'll be out of her life - and her checkbook. Revenge is going to be so sweet...
Unless Melanie gets caught in a little loophole of her own creation.
Dan's fresh start has revitalized him. His new sweetheart is miraculously transforming him into a responsible, caring, focused go-getter. In other words, he's becoming precisely the man Melanie always dreamed he could be. And now she wants him back.
With a finger on the pulse of women everywhere, Jane Heller, one of the funniest, most sly voices in fiction, turns the gender war on its head with An Ex to Grind, an unmitigated delight from first page to last.
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Karen Robards, New York Times bestselling author
April, 2005
"Anything Jane Heller writes, I buy. Her romantic comedies are the absolute best. An Ex to Grind was a joy from beginning to end."
Carly Phillips, New York Times bestselling author
April, 2005
"Come along for a witty, fast-paced, and clever ride! Jane Heller is at the top of her game."
Karen McCullah Lutz, author of The Bachelorette Party
April, 2005
"An Ex to Grind is the perfect battle-of-the-sexes tale for today's world. Every woman reading this book will empathize with the heroine and revel in the fresh take Jane Heller provides on marriage and the rules of dis-engagement."
Amanda Brown, author of Legally Blonde and Family Trust
April, 2005
"Lively, warm, and wise, Melanie Banks is a heroine to root for, and I couldn't put this book down! I really loved it!"
Booklist
April 2005
New Yorker Melanie Banks fears returning to the poverty of her childhood, and consequently has worked hard to become a top financial planner. An injury has ended her husband Dan's football career, and his failure to find a new career induces her to file for divorce, only to find out that she now has to support Dan in the style that she can afford. Her only hope is a clause in the settlement stipulating that if Dan cohabitates with someone for 90 days, her alimony stops. So she enlists the help of a matchmaker to surreptitiously find the perfect woman for her ex. Then the plan works too well. With the help of this new paragon, Dan turns into the man Melanie tried to mold him into, and how she wants him back. Heller explores the changing dynamics between men and women in our society with her usual wit and intelligence, drawing a funny and insightful picture of divorce and beyond when dreams are attained and lost.
Publishers Weekly
May 9, 2005
Nowadays, a woman might bring home more bacon than the lazy pig she married does - an idea Heller (Best Enemies, etc.) runs with in her latest breezy, easy read. Melanie Banks, wedded to her job as a financial planner and freshly divorced from former football star Dan Swain, hates writing him that monthly alimony check, which he spends on Cristal and Gucci moccasins as he languishes in their fancy apartment, while she must settle for dingier digs. Since he's sworn off remarriage and a new career, nursing old injuries to his knee and his pride, Melanie's only out is a bit of legal fine print: If Dan shacks up with a woman for 90 days, he forfeits his right to Melanie's money. Her scheme to find him his ideal woman works all too well: Dan falls for a vixen veterinarian, invites her to move in and shapes up into the man who first stole Melanie's heart. Catastrophically obsessed with the new couple and hell-bent on winning Dan back, Melanie lets her work slide and deflects the advances of her heartthrob neighbor. Readers drawn to Heller's zippy style and culturally astute wit will forgive the ham-fisted plot, which rollicks toward a reassuringly happy ending.
Chicago Tribune
June 5, 2005
A new term is coined in this wisecracking novel: bumbo - a freeloader who chooses not to work because his ex-wife, who's paying him alimony, has broken through the glass ceiling. Jane Heller ("Sis Boom Bah," "Name Dropping") slyly plays with stereotypes and modern expectations in her 12th novel.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 29, 2005
A financial planner who hates writing alimony checks to her ex-husband, a layabout former athlete, schemes to wiggle out of the deal and ends up double-crossing herself.
New York Post
"Required Reading" by Billy Heller July 3, 2005
Give Jane Heller (no relation) points for the title of her newest novel, "An Ex to Grind." In her comic 12th novel, she mines the world of women paying alimony. Sick of supporting her ex, a retired football player, Manhattan financial whiz Melanie Banks hires a matchmaker to find him a new sugar momma.
Romantic Times
July, 2005
Tired of paying alimony to her ex, financial planner Melanie Banks schemes to find him a new girlfriend so that she can invoke the cohabitation clause in their divorce settlement and stop him from spending her hard-earned cash on private jets and Cristal champagne. In an interesting twist, she hires a matchmaker to hook up Dan, only to have her plan succeed too well. When he becomes the man she always hoped he'd be, she decides she wants him back.
Heller makes this unlikely scenario work by carefully peeling away the layers of Mel's character as she continues to manipulate Dan's life, even while beginning a relationship with her handsome neighbor Evan. When all of her machinations come crashing down around her, she could be left with nothing - or finally have everything she wants.
Mel is an intriguing character, outwardly strong but emotionally insecure, and Dan and Evan are worthy foils for her. Heller does a fine job of balancing character against plot, creating a story that is both heart-touching and full of wisdom.
BookPage
July, 2005
More than 30 years have come and gone since the inception of the women's movement. In a complete role reversal, some women are now bringing home more income than their partners are. Author Jane Heller explores this issue in her romantic comedy, An Ex to Grind.
After her divorce from ex-pro football star Dan Swain, successful financial planner Melanie Banks seethes about the court-ordered alimony that lets him continue to live the high life and forces her to rent a meager apartment in Hell's Kitchen. There's one loophole: Melanie is off the hook if Dan cohabits with another woman for 90 days, so she employs a high-end matchmaker to get Dan off her payroll. After a series of failed matches, Dan falls for a gorgeous veterinarian and undergoes a complete transformation: toning up, partying less and searching for a coaching job. Melanie can't believe how much he's changed, and soon finds herself attracted to Dan all over again. But is it real love, or nostalgia?
Witty, romantic and insightful, Heller's latest offering is a true delight. Readers of all ages will identify with Melanie as the woman scorned who searches her soul to find true purpose in her life.
The Seattle Times
July 20, 2005
Ladies, to tide you over through Labor Day, we've gone through a stack of chick-lit releases...so you can zero in on your ideal beach companion...An Ex to Grind gets our "most amusing title" vote, and the novel itself is almost as funny....Melanie, a hardworking and successful Manhattan financial planner, is appalled at the idea of paying alimony to her shiftless ex, the slacker and ex-footballer Dan, who is spending her hard-earned money on Cristal and Gucci designer duds. Furious, Melanie finds a loophole: If he cohabits with another woman for 90 days, the alimony ends. Melanie hires a matchmaker and sneakily sets him up, only to discover that Dan has transformed himself into a motivated guy with an actual job. Melanie wants him back. Or does she? Heller has fun with the ambiguities.
Connie Martinson Talks Books / Syndicated Column
July 22, 2005
Men have grumbled about it for years and women are now learning why. The subject in question is alimony. Jane Heller has written a true but funny novel called "An Ex to Grind." Yes, an Alpha female named Melanie Banks, who is an investment advisor in a New York firm, is getting a divorce from her husband, Dan Swain, a professional football player, who has had an accident that has killed his playing career. They had met in college, married and Dan had paid for Melanie's MBA degree during his flush years. The marriage has disintegrated with his lying about the apartment, which she paid for, watching day time television and now he has possession of the apartment and his alimony allowance.
Melanie is steaming but there is an out if she finds that he has cohabitated with someone for 90 days; this will cancel the alimony payments. She turns to a a professional matchmaker to find Dan the perfect mate, who shapes Dan up into being the man Melanie fell in love with. Is it too late?
Cleveland Plain Dealer
August 21, 2005
Boy meets girl. Girl dumps boy. Boy gets alimony, and girl gets even. Or at least that's what she thinks. Jane Heller's 12th and latest novel, "An Ex to Grind," left me begging: begging for an additional 100 pages.
Readers familiar with her work, such as "Cha Cha Cha," "Crystal Clear" and "Princess Charming," know Heller's main themes are love, money and love gone sour. She continues to play on these chords in "An Ex to Grind."
The woman scorned is Melanie Banks, a financial planner. She has a great job in New York and a handsome husband, Dan "Traffic" Swain, a professional football player. All is well until Dan suffers an injury that takes him out of the game permanently. Feeling dejected and angry, Dan drifts. He has become a "bumbo" in Melanie's eyes. "That's what you call a male bimbo who doesn't have a job." She seeks a divorce.
Melanie finds out that divorce is more than she bargained for. She has to pay her lazy ex-husband alimony. Dan gets the fancy apartment and part custody of their pug dog, Buster. Melanie gets a depressing apartment and a grudge.
Her lawyer advises Melanie that there is a three-month clause in her divorce agreement. The clause states that if Dan shacks up with another woman for 90 days that the terms of the alimony will be terminated.
So Melanie seeks the perfect woman for Dan. Melanie enlists the services of Desiree, the Heart Hunter. Desiree suggests Leah. Leah is perfect: "She's beautiful, independent, good at her job." Here, Melanie's responses to the new Dan responding to Leah get complicated.
What's so great about Heller's writing is her wit. Not one chapter is a sleeper; the plot and characters lock the reader in. The twists continuously tempt us to skip to the final page.
"An Ex to Grind" deserves a sequel. Please, Jane Heller, give us more.
The germ of the idea for An Ex to Grind came to me during a luncheon I attended. The other guests at my table were successful professional women, most of them involved with the media in some capacity. During the meal, there was talk of the demands of a career; there was talk of office politics; there was talk of yoga as a stress reliever. And then the talk turned personal: how tricky it is to be the bread winner in a marriage. Very interesting, I thought. Here are all these women who are bringing home the bacon and admitting that there's a big shift in the dynamic of their relationships because of it - and that this shift is causing conflicts.
And then one woman piped up that what she really resented was having to pay her husband alimony now that they were splitting up. I started thinking about how the genders really have traded places in many instances. Years ago, it was the man who resented the woman he was forced to support after their marriage ended. Now, it's the other way around.
A short time later, I read a cover story in New York Magazine called "Power Wives," which quoted this startling statistic: in over a third of marriages where the wife works, she's the breadwinner. What's more, she's not always thrilled about it. Yes, there were anecdotes about career women whose husbands stayed home and took care of the children. No problems there. The women who complained had husbands who were not even trying to find work. When I read that, I came up with a new term for these couch-potato spouses: "bumbos." Male bimbos without a job.
About a month after the magazine article came out, a career woman friend called to say she was divorcing her bumbo. She added that she would be required to pay her ex alimony, given the disparity in their incomes, and that - here's the line that got me thinking - "I would do anything to get out of having to write him those monthly checks."
She would do anything? Hmmmm. I wondered if that would include hiring a matchmaker to find her ex a new woman and, thereby, lure him into violating the terms of their divorce agreement!
And so An Ex to Grind was born. I really believe it's a novel that tackles a growing issue in society and adds a comic twist to the battle of the sexes. See what you think!
