Secrets to Happiness
by Sarah Dunn

List Price: $23.99
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780316013581
Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.

Holly Frick has just endured the worst kind of breakup: the kind where you're still in love with the person leaving you. While her wounds are still dangerously close to the surface, her happily married best friend confesses over a bottle of wine that she is this close to having an affair. And another woman comes to Holly for advice about her love life --- with Holly's ex!

Holly decides that if everyone around her can take pleasure wherever they find it, so will she. As any self-respecting 30ish New York woman would do, she brings two males into her life: a flawed but endearing dog, and a good natured, much younger lover. She's soon entangled in a web of emails, chance meetings, and misguided good intentions and must forge an entirely new path to Nirvana.

From the author of The Big Love, Secrets to Happiness is a big-hearted, knife-sharp, and hilariously entertaining story about the perils of love and friendship, sex and betrayal --- and a thoroughly modern take on our struggle to be happy.

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1. If you took the title of the novel literally, what “secrets to happiness” would you say the book offers?

2. Holly is still hopelessly in love with Alex, who left her in order to start dating again. Do you think there’s a proper length of time to mourn a lost relationship?

3. What do you think of the character of Lucas? Is Holly’s relationship with someone so young inappropriate?

4. Holly’s writing partner, Leonard, has squandered the wealth that came along with his success. In what ways does money reign over the characters’ lives? Does it influence the way they act and interact?

5. Jack jokingly asks Holly whether the main character of her book “gets the guy” in the end. How do you think Secrets to Happiness might be similar to the book that Holly wrote?

6. Holly is outraged when Jack, a self-proclaimed Buddhist, orders a hamburger. Is her outrage justified? What do you think of Holly’s own struggle with morality?

7. When Holly adopts a dog with a brain tumor, Amanda accuses her of having a messiah complex. Do you agree? Is it possible that Chester rescues Holly as much as the reverse?

8. Betsy has a job normally held by women much younger than she is. What do you think of her own struggle for happiness? Do you think that age barriers can prevent people from being happy, or is happiness always possible?

9. Lonnie is a very different type of guy than Betsy usually chooses, as she freely admits. What makes her finally accept him as a romantic partner? What would you have thought of Lonnie as a potential date?

10. What do you think of the role religion plays in the book? How does it tie in with happiness?

11. Cathleen and Spence seem like an odd pair. What do you make of their relationship? Is there a logic to his dating her after being with Holly?

12. New York itself is a character in Secrets to Happiness. How do you think the story would have played out in another city? Are there inherent complications or advantages in life in a city like New York that add to or detract from relationships?

13. Amanda has “no regrets” about her dalliance with Jack. Is her attitude justifiable? Is Holly right to berate her?

14. At the end of the book, Holly has a new dog and more than a passing interest in Two Feathers. What do you think will happen between them, if anything?

15. In what ways is Holly similar to Emma Woodhouse in Jane Austen’s novel Emma? Are there other books that Secrets to Happiness reminds you of?

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