Set in 1965 at Cosmopolitan magazine under editor Helen Gurley Brown, we meet young Alice, Helen’s assistant. Brown is determined to turn Cosmopolitan into more of a guide for women to find their sexual side and along the way, Alice learns more about herself in this way and others. Exploring Alice’s family life as well as her life in New York City, Rosen creates a vivid picture of what the landscape was like for women and we get to see how Brown faces so many obstacles with the male executives at Hearst Corporation. Park Avenue Summer is a compulsively readable novel. I can't wait to read more by Renee Rosen!

A nostalgic look at a New York that doesn't exist anymore, this was entertaining and delightful and it was interesting to see some famous editors fictionalized.

Park Avenue Summer gives a fictional account of the early days of Helen Gurley Brown's editorship of Cosmopolitan from the viewpoint of her assistant, Alice. A very entertaining and well-constructed story.

This book rocked my world. I had no idea about the history of Cosmopolitan magazine, and I've been reading it for years. This is technically a book of fiction, but it's based on fact. Rosen does a great job at outlining where fact and fiction differ. This was such a good read!

I was attracted to this novel for several reasons: The gorgeous cover, the author (even though I've only read one book by her before now, it had an impact), I used to read Cosmopolitan all the time in my twenties, and it made me think of The Bold Type set in an earlier time period.

The story was both enjoyable and addictive. I couldn't get enough of it! I liked seeing Helen Gurley Brown through Alice's eyes. I think Helen would have been interesting to work with. She wasn't a Miranda Priestly. However, I was surprised by how often she had emotional breakdowns at work. I like that Alice had her own life outside of the magazine, as well as family secrets she had to unearth.

This was a terrific historical fiction novel. It made New York City come alive and gave off a Marvelous Mrs. Maisel feel. In a way, it was a nudge for me to follow my dreams and I've since started taking small steps toward doing so!

Park Avenue Summer is only the second book I've read of Renee Rosen's (I also read and loved Windy City Blues), but I definitely need to go back and read the others. She's an incredible writer and the book was captivating the entire way through!

Movie casting ideas:
Alice: Maude Apatow
Helen: Aya Cash
Trudy: Annalise Basso
Erik: Grant Gustin
Christopher: Hunter Parrish
Bridget: Erin Moriarty

I enjoyed reading this historical novel. Alice is a small town girl who move to NYC with dreams of becoming a photographer. Her first job is working as a secretary for Helen Gurley Brown at Cosmopolitan Magazine. Helen works on creating her vision for Cosmo and Cosmo girls and Alice learns to follow her dreams. The author has done a lot of research and does a good job of capturing NYC in 1965. The writing was good and it was a quick read. A Perfect book for a summer afternoon. Enjoy

Mistress of The Ritz is about sticking it to the Nazis, while wearing gorgeous clothes and drinking cocktails. Blanche Auzello, American wife of the French director of the Ritz hotel, finds herself hosting Nazi officers at the famous hotel. While she and her husband pretend to perform the Ritz’ famous hospitality, Blanche finds that being so close to the Nazi higher-ups, with access to their conversations and knowledge of their daily habits, gives her a unique advantage for the French Resistance. The result is a thrilling novel, full of suspense and intrigue. Be prepared for tragedy as well, because this is based on historical events.

Although this is a work of fiction, it is well researched and has a lot of fun facts. It piqued my interest about Helen Gurley Brown, an early feminist and groundbreaking powerful woman working in a man's world.

A fantastic historical fiction that blurs the lines of fact and fiction. This story focuses on a fictional character, Alice Weiss, the assistant to the real life Editor-in-Chief Helen Gurley Brown of the Cosmopolitan magazine at a time when the magazine made a major change in its content and there were a lot of questions as to if it should and would it survive.

First let me say, I absolutely adored this book. It was exactly what I like in a historical fiction book, great characters, some truth and some knowledge of something I had no idea about! Alice was a great character to follow through this story. She felt genuine and real and someone I wouldn't mind being friends with. I loved her juxtaposition with Helen Gurley Brown. I hope that Helen was portrayed similar to how she is in real life or as close as possible. I really enjoyed learning about some of the history behind the Cosmopolitan magazine and that it had some ups and downs. It was interesting to read its history and how it almost folded and to think of what it is today. This is the big reason as to why I read and enjoy historical fiction.

I read and loved Windy City Blues also by Renee Rosen, so I may have to make a point of reading her other two backlist before her next one comes out.

Alice Weiss is an aspiring photographer looking for a job in New York City. She moved from Ohio hoping that a family connection would provide a job. With limited experience, Alice finds employment at Cosmopolitan magazine. Her new role is the secretary to Helen Gurney Brown who is their first woman editor in chief.

In the mid-1960s Helen Gurney Brown was hired to bring life to the failing magazine. Her progressive and sometimes racy ideas were questioned by her management team causing many of them to resign. Alice develops a close relationship with Helen and enjoys the photo shoots and expensive dinners. She soon becomes protective of her boss and resists the internal forces seeking to oust her. Things become more difficult for Alice as she fights for balance in her personal and professional life.

Park Avenue Summer by Renee Rosen takes you behind the scenes of the amazing life of Helen Gurney Brown. She was a visionary who broke down social barriers in a man dominated field. I recall the racy quotes from Cosmopolitan when I was younger but never appreciated the significance until I read this book.

This was my first Renée Rosen novel and I can’t wait to read more from her. I felt like I was there in 1965 with Alice. The historical details, the New York setting, the famous characters all contributed to the absolute joy this story conveyed. I learned so much about Helen Gurley Brown and the publishing of Cosmopolitan. Can’t wait to recommend this to our readers.

I found the overall experience of reading this book to be enjoyable, with both plot and character elements that unfolded nicely and with forward momentum. While not the best book I have ever read, I would pass this title along to other readers and librarians.

I think the best way to describe this book is truly enjoyable. Even though it takes place in 1965, I found the characters and themes very timely. Hopefully that doesn’t mean our society is going backwards.
The main character, Alice, starts out as a bit naive, but I was engrossed in watching her grow as an adult & woman in this book. I also loved how the author portrayed Helen as someone who believed in her vision and fought to achieve it even though, in the background, she could be rather vulnerable.
Thank you to Netgalley & Berkley Publishing for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

It's 1965 and Alice Weiss has just moved from Ohio to New York City. Her dream is to become a professional photographer. Her mom, who sadly passed away, has a friend in New York City, Elaine, who works at a big publishing house andmight help Alice find a job. And she finds one; at Hearst as an assistant of Helen Gurley Brown, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. Cosmopolitan is not doing well. Selling numbers have been going back for years and Helen is sort of the last straw to safe the magazine. The articles in the magazine where mostly written by men and during the book Helen wants to change this, which leads her to a lot of criticism and people from the magazine working against her behind her back. An employee from the magazine, a true womanizer called Erik, is trying to lure Alice to spy on Alice for him and give him all the inside information on what Helen is working on for the magazine. Alice stands up to him and stays true to Helen, altough she gets a few a no-strings attached dates with Erik. Meanwhile she is a big support for Helen, who tries to makes a succes of the upcoming July and truly wants to make it a magazine for the single working girl who loves fashion, beauty, but this is met by a lot of resistance. Meanwhile Alice is meeting with her new friend Christopher, who is a professional photographer and takes Alice with him on shoots in the city to gain experience. The July numbers hit the records though and the magazine seems to be saved, but not until, with the help of Alice two moles who have been leaking to other magazines are fired. And then Alice get's a photography job offer that leaves her to choose for herself or for Helen.

I really enjoyed this beautiful and entertaining read, it was very good from the first to the last page. It was entertaining to read from Alice's point of view how and why she landed in New York, and how she got her job at Cosmopolitan. I never knew about the history of Cosmopolitan and Helen Gurley Brown and what she meant for the change of the magazine world. She had quite a though job to make people see the vision she had for it and that it worked out in the end, as the magazine still exists worldwide.
Further on, the story is just a perfext mix and balance of fact and fiction. And the end was just perfectly wrapped up. This book was just a perfect one and one of a kind!

I loved this book! Initially I thought it would be hard to get into but that wasn't the case at all. I loved the way that Renee wrote about New York in the golden age and I found myself also wanting to work for Helen Gurley Brown. The way that Renee covered the whole women-in-the-workplace aspect was also really clever, as it resonated so well with the issues that are still going on, even today. Brilliant!

Another FINE, 5 star historical fiction novel. Anything about New York automatically grabs my attention, and then you tell me it’s about Helen Gurley Brown and her early days at Cosmopolitan and I am all in and this one did NOT disappoint!!

I loved the fictional character of Alice Weiss and that the focus of the novel was on her New York experience as well as telling HGB’s story from her perspective as HGB’s first secretary at Cosmopolitan. I am fascinated with that era, and loved learning how the magazine industry worked, as well as how women were starting to become more independent at that time. The scandalous topics were also interesting and I am not mad at the fact that she made those men blush.

Regarding Alice’s background, she has lost her mother to a horrific car accident, her father has since remarried to someone she doesn’t really care for, and her fiancé has just left her for someone else. Heartbroken, she heads to New York to pursue a career in photography and she is in desperate need of a job, where Elaine Sloane, a friend of her mother, sets her up with the job at Cosmopolitan.

While at Cosmo, Alice learns how to navigate the city, learns the industry, and under HGB’s guidance, learns that she can have casual relationships with men and it’s ok. She makes friends, although some of these ‘friends’ aren’t what they seem, and she ends up meeting a fellow photographer that teaches her a little more than how to take photos.

I could not get enough of this and was so sad when it was over. These are my absolute favorite types of historical fiction stories by far, and I highly recommend this if you like this type of genre or anything about New York or the fashion industry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkeley for the electronic copy to review. All opinions above are my own.

Thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to read this book! I appreciate the kindness. <3

Breezy, light, and funny - even when dealing with the overly-mysogonistic world of magazine publishing in the 1960s, Park Avenue Summer puts the reader smack-dab in the middle of this turbulent time in New York City. The protagonist, Alice, gives us a glimpse into the world of the indomitable Helen Gurley Brown as she takes Cosmopolitan magazine in a different direction - a more sexy, sassy, female-centered direction.

I loved this book and the strong girl-power message it brings!

One of the best books I’ve read in 2019, I absolutely was captivated by Alice’s story about her summer in New York for Helen Gurley Brown! With a blend of historical fiction built around historical fact, Renee Rosen crafted a compelling story that allowed me to not only fall in love with the fictional Alice, but also love Helen, a woman who changed the way young women were able to think about their own bodies, empowerment, and relationships. An incredible novel!

Friends and long-time readers will know I’m a big fan of Kate White, who happened to be the Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan magazine only two years after Helen Gurley Brown left. I’ve always loved the way Cosmopolitan magazine promotes a new way of female empowerment—feminism that focuses on not only equality, but celebrating all of the wonderful things about being a female. When I went into this book, I thought it would be the story of Helen told through Alice’s eyes, but it wasn’t that at all!

In fact, the story of Alice completely captivated me. Alice is this amazing example of the type of reader that Helen’s vision of Cosmopolitan would not only reach out to—but change fundamentally. Alice is coming of age, in her early 20s and new to New York City. Alice struggles between being a “good girl” and finding out who she is and what she wants. Alice is the exact person to show readers about Helen’s girls (“my girls” as she calls them)—the ones who are young but empowered, who want careers, who want to be single but still have sex. This is the story of Helen’s girls told through Alice.

I absolutely adored Alice!!! She was this wonderful mix of inexperienced and savvy, navigating challenging situations based on her instincts, which over time she learns to trust to lead her the right way. I loved how everywhere Alice goes in the city, she thinks about her mother and what could have been. How did her glamorous, talented mother end up in the Midwest raising a family?

As Alice finds her way to working for Helen Gurley Brown on the re-imagined Cosmopolitan magazine, she learns who she is—a girl who is fiercely loyal, who wants to experience different men so she knows when she finds the right one for her, and who wants to be a photographer but is scared she isn’t talented enough. Alice and her Don Juan, as Helen calls him, was such a fun and relatable part of this book. Helen is right—we all have a Don Juan who we go back to even though we know he will leave us shattered.

This was such a unique way to celebrate Helen Gurley Brown’s life—through a fictional story about the exact sort of girl that Helen reached through her pioneering efforts at Cosmopolitan. I hope readers love this book as much as I did!

Thank you to Berkley for my copy. Opinions are my own.

Once in awhile you come across a premises that you just know you have to experience for yourself. You pick up a book and you just instantly connect. Not because of the characters or even the setting but just because it simply is written so well that you immediately get sucked into the very story itself and then before you know it, you are in love. In love with the characters, in love with the setting, in love with it all.

Park Avenue Summer is an exceptional read that not only took me by surprise but took my breath away. I absolutely devoured it and adored it and just couldn't get enough of it.
It is so well written, so well voiced and truly something I can't recommend enough. A wonderful insightful look into women in the work place in a time where we weren't quite accepted yet and had to fight for every little triumph and recognition we received.