By Jardine Libaire
Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover and Paperback Editions

Lee lives the party girl’s dream of New York life. She hangs at the hot spots with the cool crowds and scores the best drugs. She manages a Tribeca restaurant, then parties until dawn. She’s got it all...even a sugar daddy.

But things aren’t always as good as they appear from the outside. In reality, Lee is not truly happy.

Here Kitty Kitty Excerpt I chugged the beer, threw the bottle down an empty street, cherished its smash on asphalt. Stopped at the deli next to my place, bought a big white Entenmann’s cake and another forty, and perched on my stoop. At four in the morning, I somehow made it to Black Betty. Picked up a kid from Tijuana. He lived in a honeycomb of rooms, his bed separated from the next by a Bart Simpson beach towel hung from the ceiling. Prep-cook uniform, soiled, by the door...Woke up in my own bed, pillowcase wet with puke that smelled of malt liquor and coconut icing. © Jardine Libaire Published with permission from Little, Brown & Co.

She’s self-destructive. She works hard but has nothing solid to show for it because she spends her money at thrift shops and on good times rather than on rent and bills.

She loves Yves, the older man who takes care of her but she knows she can never be the class act he deserves. And even all of his money can’t make her more than content. The love of her life is her painting . . . something she has severely neglected of late. And for Lee, until she puts that back into its proper place on her list of priorities, nothing else will fall into place either but she’s just too scared of failure. Failure in her art and failure in herself.

So, she works and she spends and she parties until maybe, just maybe, she’ll find within herself the determination to one day take that step toward the real Lee.

Bookworm's Briefing
Jardine Libaire’s style of mixing beautiful prose with short, blunt thoughts is as much a poetic contrast as is the inner workings of her protagonist’s confused mind. Here Kitty Kitty reads almost like a scrapbook of memories - a party here, a lovemaking session there, failed attempts to live an almost-forgotten dream in between.

Some descriptions come in bursts and some are more drawn out. But they all portray the pensive and even angst-ridden emotions that are at war with the free spirit persona Lee has donned.

This novel can easily be related to by any reader that can see past the obvious to the turmoil below the surface of themselves...a turmoil that many people feel and most deny as Lee did. Here Kitty Kitty serves as a sort of talisman that one can always dig back to the surface no matter how deep the hole.