Blank
By Zibby Owens (Little A)

What happens when a novelist’s best idea was used in her first book and she can’t come up with a follow-up to her best seller?

That’s where we find Pippa Jones, the lead character in Blank, the debut novel by popular book podcaster and publisher Zibby Owens. Pippa is a Los Angeles Jewish mother of two stuck in a loveless marriage who owes her publisher a book—by the end of the week.

Who can write a book in a week? Not Pippa, even though her brain races at 60 miles per hour with new ideas (except when it comes to her book) while she racks up Instagram followers on her secret feed where she posts about her real estate obsession. She also endlessly ruminates over her children—teenager Zoe and soon-to-be-bar-mitzvahed Max. And it’s sweet Max who comes up with the eponymous idea: Why not just sell a book of blank pages?

After all, as described by Owens, who brings an insider’s knowledge to her critique of publishing, the “corrupt” publishing industry would likely play along as it is more focused on an author’s popularity and ability to promote a book on social media than the book itself.

Much happens to Pippa in this zany novel after she comes up with this stunt: Her agent dumps her and her publisher hits on her—and then decides to run with the idea. Her real estate obsession leads to her finding out the truth about her marriage and she meets her Jewish summer camp crush as she crashes her car. Yet despite all Pippa’s adorable chaos, she has a core stability. 

Could it be her family and Jewish values? 

“We weren’t particularly religious—Reform, not Orthodox,” Pippa says in the beginning of the book. “For us, that meant showing up a few times a year for the High Holidays, lighting the Shabbat candles when we remembered, and hosting a Passover seder. Orthodox was something else entirely. But the Jewish values were the same: giving back, being kind, being ‘people of the book.’ And bar and bat mitzvahs were a nonnegotiable in our family.”

Like any good chick-lit novel, everything somehow works out, including the dismantling of the publishing industry in a way that Owens might hope for in real life. Now if Pippa could just come up with her next book idea.

Amy Klein is the author of The Trying Game: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind.