Book Reviews
Close’s witty voice...charts the romantic shenanigans of a bevy of New York women in their 20s, before career success or Botoxed foreheads. Dating is a phenomenon to be analyzed in improvised group therapy over cocktails.
New York Times
Follows three women and peripheral friends as they alternately flounder and flourish through their 20s. Weddings provide the backdrop as the women feel their way in and out of inert relationships and crappy jobs, trying to figure out who they want to be.
Washington Post
Anyone who has seen The Sound of Music—that is, everyone—will likely recognize the title of Jennifer Close’s Girls in White Dresses as a certain Oscar Hammerstein lyric. But given the tone and tenor of this debut novel, it shouldn’t surprise that the reference isn’t particularly affectionate.... Close, who is 32, captures the extended post-collegiate ennui associated with her generation.... Quite endearing.
Elysa Gardner - USA Today
Close straddles the line between melancholy and breeziness as she chronicles the exploits of recent college grads trying to make it in New York City . . . Hints at something deeper and truer: not just the adventure of being young, but the unmooring of it, too.
Leah Greenblatt - Entertainment Weekly
Jennifer Close’s debut, Girls in White Dresses, follows a group of young women doing all the things they know they shouldn’t—falling for one’s boss, dating gay men—all while drinking far too many mimosas at other people’s weddings.
Vogue
Artfully spare prose adds a literary tinge to the chick lit staples—navigating relationships, bridesmaid duties, disappointing first jobs—explored in Close's debut collection. At their weakest, the stories owe too much to their predecessors: "The Showers," in which the recurring characters travel to a suburban bridal shower, is essentially a retelling of a snappier Sex and the City episode, and Isabella's boss in "Blind" has the dark shades of The Devil Wears Prada. The standout moments come in "The Peahens," when Abby reveals her unusual family and her struggle to fit in (she "studied hard, taking notes on the silver link bracelets all the girls wore"), and the sharp "Hope," when Shannon takes a backseat to her boyfriend's naïve political passion for "the Candidate" of a presidential campaign. Occasionally funny (as when Isabella refers to her dinner dates as "parallel eating"), but without the risk taking of The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing or the deeply explored emotion of Prep, these stories will resonate with readers in the throes of the quarter-life churn who can see themselves in the cast.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Isabella, Mary, and Lauren are three friends in New York City navigating relationships, careers, early adulthood, and other people's weddings. Lauren is a real-estate agent who meets a man who could be Mr. Right—or a sociopath. Isabella is an assistant at a publishing house who suffers through a bad relationship, then meets a man who seems perfect until he asks her to move to Boston with him. Mary is a serious lawyer, married with two kids, whose husband is a perennial mama's boy incapable of grocery shopping on his own. Mixed in with the trials and tribulations of the protagonists are humorous vignettes from the lives of some of their other friends and acquaintances—many of whom are on their way to the altar or trying to find a way to get there. Verdict: This series of linked short stories is reminiscent of Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. It is modern and funny, with original, wry observations. Close's debut novel will appeal to both fans of contemporary women's fiction with a hip vibe and readers who enjoy old-school chick lit.
Library Journal
With a light touch and utterly believable characters, Close’s...appealing debut manages to capture the humor, heartache and cautious optimism of her protagonists.
Kirkus Reviews