Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys: A Novel - Hardcover

Garcia, Eric

3.28

433 ratings by Goodreads

9780060730314: Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060730315 ISBN 13: 9780060730314

Publisher: William Morrow, 2004

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What if women really could change men? Sex and the City meets Misery in this brilliantly twisted take on chick lit.

On the surface, Cassandra French is living the typical LA lifestyle. A lawyer at a film studio, she spends her days bored by the tedium of the Business Affairs department, and her evenings either dating a string of useless men or meeting up with her girlfriends to bemoan the uselessness of said men. But luckily none of this matters, because Cassandra French has a vocation. Cassandra is a woman on a mission. And her mission is to reform men. Because how is it that she’s got such great girlfriends but never meets a man worthy of them? How is it that a man can have no conversation, no manners and no fashion sense...and yet he gets his pick of beautiful women? Something has to be done.

And so, in her basement, she’s set up her own Finishing School for Boys. There, men learn to dress well, to date well, to compliment a woman, to make great dinner conversation, and to leave behind all the arrogance, brutishness and idiocy that society has bred into them. It’s all going brilliantly—her students are happy, Cassandra’s succeeding at something she believes in passionately—until she enrolls Jason Kelly, the studio’s biggest star. And suddenly Cassie’s in over her head...

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From the Back Cover:

Cassandra French is a twenty-nine-year-old business affairs lawyer for a movie studio in Los Angeles. She has a creepy, platitudinous mother who is under house arrest for telemarketing fraud; and two best friends: studio exec Claire, who's sleeping with her shrink, and Lexi, a blond man-magnet of a yoga instructor. Oh, and she also has three handsome young men chained to cots in her basement. They're enrolled in Cassandra French's Finishing School For Boys.

Cassie has spent years in the dating hell that is Los Angeles, finding man after man who doesn't quite match up to her exacting standards. When Owen, a promising young man she meets at a baseball game, becomes a glassy eyed drunk by the seventh inning, she decides that all he needs is a little push in the right direction; after he passes out in her car, she brings him home, locks him up downstairs, and commences a year and a half of lessons on color coordination, behavior on dates, and ocassionally, sex. Owen proves an able student and is followed by two other likely candidates.

Things start to get a little complicated when Jason Kelly, Hollywood's biggest heartthrob, tries to seduce Cassie into fudging a contract issue on one of his movies. That's no way to treat a lady -- and Cassie has just the cure.

With an endearingly amoral heroine, a pitch-perfect L.A. setting, and a cast of unforgettably warped characters, Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys is a shockingly funny, original, dead on satire of the dating scene.

About the Author:

Eric Garcia is the author of several novels, including Matchstick Men, which was made into a feature film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Nicolas Cage, and the Anonymous Rex series. A native of Miami, Florida, he now lives in Southern California with his wife, two daughters, and a dog.

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