Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Secret (of Happiness)-Demosthenes Armeniades

The Secret (of Happiness)
Demosthenes Armeniades
Tinseltown, Jul 2010, $18.00
ISBN: 9780984343102

Halycon recruiter Mr. Singh offers Harvard Law School grad David Finnegan five times what he will make at the Wall St. firm he was going to start working at. His fiancĂ©e Dot Peabody is ready to relocate from Oregon to Manhattan. However, encouraged by his family, David agrees to meet with halcyon billionaire Max Simon on the man’s personal island.

Soon David works for Max and travels the globe making multibillion dollar deals. He climbs the Himalayas and flies into space. David has everything except he loses Dot.

Max offers David a new deal; switches places. While David runs Halcyon sans Dot, Max seeks the Secret of happiness. He thinks he may have found it at a Wal-Mart when he meets Marcie Rogers who wants nothing to do with the ultra wealthy Max except as a customer for fear of losing her cashier’s position. Soon David realizes the Secret of happiness for him is Dot.

With a Prince and the not really Pauper switching places, readers obtain an interesting character driven novel. The key players are fully developed and the agreed to switch works as an exhilarating personal quest tale. Max seeks The Secret (of Happiness) by going into the field instead of relying on his top gun researchers back on the island. David on the other hand knows what the Secret (of Happiness) is since he lost it and become unhappy. Fans who enjoy a different type of tale will relish Demosthenes Armeniades’ profound story that builds its premise from Maslow’s Hierarchy in which once the basic needs are met, money cannot buy happiness though the lack of can lead to unhappiness.

Harriet Klausner

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