Audiobook Review: Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage by Helen Ellis

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage by Helen Ellis
Narrator: Helen Ellis
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: June 13, 2023
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Welcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis’s New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called “What’s in the box?” makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower.

When the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins’s Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter.

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge is a book of humorous essays written by Helen Ellis about her life with her husband in New York City. Topics range from an email with instructions to the cat sitter, to Helen’s plant addiction, to how they kept themselves entertained during the pandemic. Even though I think I’m the target audience for this book – a middle-aged woman – I just found these essays to be mildly amusing. None of them were laugh-out-loud funny to me. But I am clearly in the minority because I’ve seen a ton of reviews talking about how hilarious it is. She’s been compared to David Sedaris but I got more Erma Bombeck vibes from it. Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge wasn’t my brand of humor but it may be yours – don’t let me stop you from picking it up.