Television producer Jamie Whitfield is a working Park Avenue mother who has to contend with her part-time job at NBS, raising three children under the age of 10, and a workaholic lawyer husband who is so concerned with keeping up with the Joneses that he neglects his family in the process. When her oldest son, Dylan, begins having problems at school and refuses to confide in Jame at the same time that his father isn't around, Jamie decides to hire someone to serve as a positive male role model for Dylan and hopefully provide the outlet he needs to come out of his introverted shell.

Enter Peter Bailey—a college-educated computer science major currently working part-time designing a computer program to help kids

with their homework. Peter comes in and saves the day, helping Jamie to run her household more efficiently, helping Dylan with his self-confidence, and making Jamie feel alive again for the first time in years. At the same time he's picking up the pieces of Jamie's scattered home life, her work life is falling apart. On the verge of breaking one of the biggest political news scandals in the country, Jamie is so focused on the story that she doesn't see the potential pitfalls in the witness's story. Though Peter tries to help her with this as well, he's only one man and Jamie has to figure out for herself what's going to be best for her career...

THE MANNY paints a bleak portrait of the state of marriage in the rich and privileged. Jamie comes from a small Minnesota town and has a problem fitting in with the other Park Avenue wives who have such a sense of entitlement. She spends a lot of time lamenting her place in society, where she doesn't fit in and why—time that could be better spent either doing something about it or accepting it. Her husband, an insufferable lout who cares more what others think about him than what's going on in his own household, is an absolute nightmare and the fact that Jamie spends so much time lamenting the fact that she's been with him for so long when he's so obviously racist, spoiled, and insensitive did more to make me dislike her than to make me hope she'd get herself out of a bad situation. Furthermore, the fact that she strung her handsome, successful, down-to-earth manny along while she figured out what she wanted was unacceptable to me and not the makings of a good romance/chick lit book. There were times when I thought this story was entertaining and amusing, but as a whole it fell short of the mark.