Maria Semple's remarkable first novel isn't just a witty, sharp-edged satire about adultery, social climbing, and the absurdities of L.A. On a deeper level, THIS ONE IS MINE is a complex, unexpectedly moving story about the risks and rewards of love, in all its irrational glory.
— Tom Perrotta, Little Children, Election


Maria Semple begins like a roller coaster, clacking up slowly and ominously and then, Hold on! You are plunging into the great dreamworld of LA money and ambition where nothing is quite real until it breaks apart and suddenly there is the terrible bottom and end of it all. This is a love story with real thorns and a heroine you will weep for. 
— James Salter, Last Night, Sport and a Pastime 

This delightful novel gives pleasure on every page.  Deftly satiric, wickedly hilarious, brilliantly plotted to ensure maximum mayhem, it also sustains a sweet, triumphant tenderness towards characters who act so appallingly.  If at first it seems a puzzle that the novelist can inspire such rueful yet endearing affection for these too-often greedy, shallow people, the answer is that we come to recognize them--as us.
— Phillip Lopate, Two Marriages, The Art of the Personal Essay


A fresh, flamboyantly witty new voice.
— Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary


Once I started this book, I couldn't put it down. It is funny, carefully observed, beautifully written, very knowing and in general a real treat. Stop wondering which book to buy. Buy this one. 
— Merrill Markoe, Walking In Circles Before Lying Down


Maria Semple writes like a cross between Nathanael West and Dorothy Parker. THIS ONE IS MINE is trenchantly funny portrait of Los Angeles life that rings uncomfortably true. 
— Darren Star, creator, Sex and The City


Maria Semple delves unafraid, with a sharp eye and sharper hand, into the big issues: Love, Happiness, Life and Death, and emerges with a Los Angeles we never knew, but always suspected. A triumphant debut.
— Gigi Levangie Grazer, The Starter Wife

Maria Semple takes on the follies of the posh life in Los Angeles in her sharp, funny first novel. This One Is Mine is a delight. 
—The Boston Globe
 

With Joan Didion's eye for the bleak, Nathanael West's ear for the desperate and her own taste for the comic, Semple has penned a scathing vision of La-La Land. Semple's forgiving and funny voice guides us through the nuttiness with well-grounded prose. Unlike some former television writers who turn to novels, she employs none of the cheap tricks of her previous trade. This is not a made-for-TV movie and it doesn't end like one. People pay for their mistakes, as we do in life, and some of them learn lessons — understanding, forgiveness, gratitude — and live on with their scars.
— Seattle Times   

Semple takes Hollywood stereotypes and makes you care about them. She's unflinching, but compassion isn't sacrificed. The devastating, poetic finale gives us reason to anticipate Semple's follow-up novel.
— Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Truth, of all variety, triumphs here. This One Is Mine is refreshingly clear-eyed about its characters and subjects. She beautifully renders the twists and turns an overburdened heart can take.
— Los Angeles Times 

Hilarious. Semple, through her zesty writing, earns unlikely sympathy for her sometimes-unlikable characters — Hartford Courant

Shocking and memorable. Ms. Semple knows how to hold an audience’s attention.
— New York Observer

Not many books can make me laugh and cry; Maria Semple’s debut novel did both. It is wickedly funny; at times tart and bitter, other times sweet and wise. I expected This One Is Mine to be a story about vapid unfulfilled women trying to keep or catch a husband while tracking the latest trend. But this book is not at all what I expected. Thankfully it is much more.
— Book Reporter


Los Angeles never looked so rich or so poor as it does in This One Is Mine. This funny-tender send-up of the City of Angels is marked by whip-smart dialogue, skillful plot twists and gimlet-eyed observations. Maria Semple's debut is more seasoned than most.
— Kansas City Star 
read full review here.


The lives of those who inhabit multimillion-dollar homes in the hills outside Los Angeles are ripe for satire. What's remarkable about Maria Semple's first novel, This One Is Mine, which is set in those hills, is that it isn't just parody. This One Is Mine, remarkably, manages to combine comedy and compassion. Its characters are flawed and self-absorbed, but they're doing their best, and Semple doesn't give us the easy out of feeling superior. Even more remarkable, the novel hums with suspense. It's built into the cliffhanger scene endings, and it's also there on a larger level: This isn't one of those novels in which it's clear what (or whom) the heroines ought to choose. Author and reader aren't gazing over the characters' heads, knowing what will happen next. Each turn of the plot brings new surprises, and the result is a novel that leaves a more lasting impression than its satirical side would suggest.
— The Columbus Dispatch

For those of us who have only been to Los Angeles to visit Disneyland—and whose main source of information about the City of Angels is supermarket tabloids—it seems a mysterious and slightly bizarre place with a tan, thin and vacuously blonde population. While Maria Semple's provocative, searingly funny portrait of life in La La Land in This One Is Mine does little to change the city's image, it does make for a surprising and often hilarious debut novel about happiness and consequences. She has a wholly original voice and deftly infuses humor into This One Is Mine (you'll laugh out loud at the sayings on the nanny's secondhand T-shirts) while capturing the bittersweet moments of motherhood and a marriage teetering on the edge. The result is a novel that is both entertaining and unexpected—a little bit like L.A. itself.
— Book Page

Semple’s got a gift for dialogue and she can draw out small moments from her cast of characters that make their problems seem real and important. She can write a scene that tugs at your heart while it makes you snicker. That’s hard to do.
— The Buffalo News


Maria Semple bashes Hollywood celebrity, New Age nonsense and struggling relationships in this smart and funny debut. Her takes are tack sharp as her delightful cast is driven comically and tragically ever deeper into a culture of artifice. Semple obviously knows her turf, and she does an exquisite job of stomping all over it. 
— Publisher's Weekly

This funny and poignant story of relationships in Hollywood is fun to read, with characters who beg to be discussed. What a great book club pick!
—Indie Next List

This superb debut novel is perfectly constructed.This One Is Mine is smashing, memorable and funny, wise and timely. In the end, it is about what love is and what loves does.
— The Kingston Review

As a domestic drama --- as a story of love and misunderstanding --- this book is sublime. It's got wit and humor and a laugh-out-loud chapter in a New Age retreat. It's even got a happy ending that seems well-earned. “This One Is Mine” is a spectacular debut --- Maria Semple is the real thing.
— Jesse Kornbluth, Head Butler

With its fast-paced plot, laugh-out-loud shenanigans, and touching conclusion, this novel will certainly charm readers.
— Bookmarks Magazine

Fun and engrossing. Semple's first novel is an alternately hopeful and cynical look at a debauched group of LA natives. 
— Booklist