Former publicist Robert Rave delivered one of last summer’s breeziest beach reads — “Spin” — a novel based on his own experiences working in the PR jungles of New York.
Rave’s second novel “Waxed” (St. Martin’s Griffin) — set to be published August 3 — is another witty and smart look at fast lane life in contemporary Manhattan, but this time around the writer has come up with a much more complex plot and a larger cast of characters.
The story follows three sisters — born into a middle-class Queens family — who work together at a chic meatpacking district salon owned by the oldest of the trio.
Rave brings these three women — and their friends and the men they love — to vibrant life in a juicy novel that most readers will probably finish off in a few visits to the beach.
The author has a really acute sense of the way that a dizzying variety of people can come together in a commercial establishment like the waxing salon run by Carolina Impresario. “Waxed” keeps going off in interesting new directions with new customers and their crises.
Rave manages to mix high comedy with very serious interludes in the Impresario sisters’ lives without ever seeming to force things — the result is a romantic/social comedy with depth.
Middle sister Anna has just gone through a rough divorce that forces her to go back to work — she is both grateful to and resentful of Carolina for being her port in a storm.
Youngest sister Sofia is the hippest of the three girls — happily married to a 
handsome banker but still filled with 20something energy that she starts burning off in trendy nightspots with a male customer who becomes her new BFF, or, in downtown Manhattan lingo, her “gay husband.”
Sofia is popular with her clients, but knows the score when it comes to revealing that she travels in the hippest circles when she is not working: “Sofia knew the exact club Alyson was talking about. In fact, she knew the doorman and breezed past the velvet rope during the club’s opening four years ago. However, there’s an unwritten rule in the service industry: Make the clients feel like they’re superior even when they’re not…It didn’t matter that Sofia took home more money than most of her young clientele. What mattered was the comfort they felt in believing that, even though they might not be where they want to be in their lives or careers, at least they were better than the service-industry workers.”
“Waxed” is a treat that delivers a completely satisfying finale for all three Impresario sisters while leaving the door open for a sequel.
