This book reads like non fiction; like a chat between girlfriends. ( )

Helen Ellis is pretty reliable for the reader looking for light and oftentimes relatable humor. She is the person who you'd like to have as a friend because her filter is a little askew but not malicious. I've read a collection of her quite entertaining, definitely offbeat short stories (American Housewife) and several of her generally enjoyable essay collections (Southern Lady Code is my pick for the best) so I was looking forward to Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage.

These short essays, many of which are a result of settling into her NYC apartment with Lex, her husband of twenty years, during the pandemic, are mildly humorous but not quite as laugh out loud funny as I'd hoped, maybe because I'm the long time inhabitant of a similar marriage. Ellis is quite candid about her life with her husband and pokes fun at him and, more often, at herself throughout the collection. Her gentle hyperbole makes for heartwarming and appealing storytelling. She's quirky, finding humor in the mundane, and looking at things just a bit slant, writing about her husband's (and her friends' husbands) snoring and all the failed solutions for it, learning to tend plants and turning their apartment into a jungle during the pandemic, her particular and exacting instructions for their cat sitter, using stickers--which she adores--to commemorate her sex life with her husband, her views on death, and more.

There is much to enjoy here and it is a quick read but ultimately it didn't make me laugh out loud and I forgot a lot of it as soon as I closed the book. To be fair, this might be because I come from a family filled with our own brand of crazy (for instance, my youngest once told me that when he was home alone every sound was a serial killer, and his ever empathetic sister questioned why it had to be a serial killer since they only had to kill him, we claim gifts and other items of interest belonging to others by asking if we can have whatever it is on that person's "last day," and like Ellis, my parents have debated who can be trusted to be their "plug-puller" at the end of life--spoiler, it's not my sister or me but our husbands, which probably tells you more than you need to know about us, and my father has requested that his ashes be spread over the ever malfunctioning septic field because he's spent so much time up to his knees in it in life that he might as well spend eternity there too) so Ellis and her friends and family's brand of crazy is less entertaining kookiness and more just everyday, normal daily life to me. Most people think she and this book are outrageously funny. Me? I think she's moderately amusing in this collection and wonder (not really) if we're distant branches on the same, not right family tree. That said, most readers will get a lot of chuckles out of this light and easy read. ( )

Super quick and very funny collection of essays about a modern marriage. Helen Ellis talks about her and her husband and their life together. There were several times I laughed out loud.
The parts about grudges, the first kiss, the potential death, were all very funny. I also laughed about the social media commentary.
If you want a good laugh, this will certainly fit the bill! ( )

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. ( )

Helen Ellis's upcoming book (June) of humorous essays, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions of a Happy Marriage continues her streak of making me laugh so hard my stomach hurts. (American Housewife, Southern Lady Code, and Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light also my stomach hurt.)

In this book, Ellis shares essays about her happy marriage to her husband Lars, which survived the pandemic, where they binge-watched Dynasty in their "lounge" room painted bright coral. Helen and Lars are now middle-aged, but he still makes her heart "go pitter-patter" when he walks into a room.
Of course when all her middle-aged friends get together, they talk about their husbands and their loud and incessant "snoring, and skin tags and prostates and knees". (A Bear Walks Into...) She shares that her grandparents had separate bedrooms her grandmother's bedside with "a hardback like The Shell Seekers", and a 1970s brass princess phone as heavy as an anvil". Granddaddy's bedroom "smelled like Old Spice, and next to his bed was a pack of cigarettes and a police scanner."

"An Email to our Cat Sitter" will be recognizable to anyone who has left their beloved, older, persnickety cats with another human who needs to understand all the intricate details of how to feed and care for the delightful beings. It is pages long, much longer than the notes I used to leave for people who babysat my young children.

In Two Days Before My Wedding, Ellis shares everything that went wrong on her wedding day, including that the Greek restaurant where the reception was to be held burned down two before the wedding. She says that weddings are memorable for what went wrong, like while viewing a friend's wedding video where "his stepmother appears without panties as he says "doing the splits standing up" or as my friend in Florida would say, "showing everyone her fine china."

There are countless essays that I highlighted including We Are Not That Couple (who runs marathons or signs up for dance lessons) and "May I Hold Your Grudge For You?" (about how its not appropriate to hold grudges for yourself buy perfectly acceptable to hold them on behalf of friends.)

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge will make you laugh and remind you of why you still love your spouse. I'm laughing now just remembering all these essays. If you have a June or later anniversary, buy this and share it with your spouse. ( )