The Next Best Thing

Jennifer Weiner returns with a story about a young woman trying to make it in Hollywood.

Ruth Saunders headed west at twenty-three with her seventy-year-old grandmother in tow, hoping to be hired as a television writer. Four years later she gets the call: the sitcom she wrote, The Next Best Thing, has been given the green light, and she will be the show-runner.

But her dream job comes with demanding actors, number-crunching executives, an unrequited crush on a boss, and her grandmother's impending nuptials. The novel takes readers inside writers' rooms, backstage bad behavior, and set politics in Los Angeles show business.