Live Wire

August 1, 2022
Inside the TV personality's career, marriage, cosmetic procedures, and countless other personal matters. You can only make so many jokes about how bad your book is and what a lousy writer you are and how you don't know how to use a semicolon before readers will begin to wonder why you think you can get away with an entire essay about being stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway (with a semicolon error in the first paragraph). However, the intended audience for this book will not be coming for the prose style, wisdom, or even salacious secrets (if there were any, the Ripa-loving tabloids would have picked them over long ago). Fans likely possess the main takeaway: that the author is married to the hottest man alive, Mark Consuelos, whom she met when he auditioned to play her husband on the soap opera All My Children. As the author emphasizes throughout, her husband's extraordinary physical attractiveness is rivaled only by his Olympian sex drive. Ripa's signature shticks include self-deprecation (bra size "32 AA long," she got "married during the Cretaceous period"), know-nothingism ("I bid a hasty adieu, which means goodbye in either German, French, or English, I think"), and repetition. The latter is on full display in her description of how she and Richard Gere aided an accident victim at Anjelica Huston's birthday party at Jimmy Buffett's house. "Something you've probably surmised by now, dear reader, is that I have a hard time ending things. Or rather, I have difficulty knowing how to begin the ending of things. You should have seen the lengths of these 'short stories' before they were edited," Ripa tells us in an epilogue, but the last essays--nearly 50 pages about her children's college choices--certainly escaped the pruning shears, showcasing an unfortunate tendency to mistake clich�s for insight. If you just want to hang out with Kelly, that's exactly what you'll get.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2022
Ripa has hosted various iterations of Live for more than two decades, but her first book of essays focuses more on her childhood and family. She reminisces about the Jersey Shore in the 1970s and gives a spot-on dissection of the differences between North and South Jersey. She talks about running away to find her real mother, Cher (in her dreams!) and her quickie Vegas wedding that led to her long-lasting marriage with her husband, actor Mark Consuelos. It's not all about the past, though she does speak fondly of the time before smartphones; she also tells current stories about her three children, her relationship with therapy (mostly the TV show Couples Therapy), and a hilariously madcap story about Richard Gere and an ill-fated party in the Hamptons. Fans will dissect her essay on auditioning for Live and her prickly relationship with its host, Regis Philbin, but the book is mostly drama-free. Ripa has an energetic writing style, zinging between topics with snarky asides, and readers will be drawn to her humor and the insights into her life. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Millions tune in to Ripa every morning; expect those devoted viewers to drive demand for her first book.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 26, 2022
Actor and talk show host Ripa offers a no-holds-barred glimpse of her personal and professional life in her self-deprecating debut. Ripa’s humor shines as she dives into topics such as marriage, family, chauvinism, therapy, cosmetic surgery, and her kids leaving for college. The former All My Children star’s flair for the dramatic takes center stage as she discusses her lifelong obsession with Cher, meeting her husband (and Riverdale fan favorite) Mark Consuelos, and the unconventional auditions that landed her the role of Live! with Regis cohost: for her first on-camera audition, Ripa interviewed a psychic who announced Ripa’s pregnancy to the studio audience, though Ripa herself hadn’t yet told anyone outside her immediate family. “I felt like I was underwater,” Ripa writes of her shock. In one particularly entertaining story, Ripa giddily describes a lavish dinner party where she sat directly across from Richard Gere. While speaking with him, she indulged in a harmless fantasy inspired by his 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman: “I do remember at one point wondering if Richard Gere could pick me up as easily as he did Debra Winger.” Ripa has a penchant for name-dropping and rambling (or, as she puts it, making a “long story, longer”), but her essays are unapologetic, uninhibited, and undeniably hilarious. This banter-filled collection will delight daytime television devotees. Agent: Cait Hoyt, Creative Artists Agency.