[In the following review, Barnes offers praise for Waiting to Exhale, which she describes as "an important book" that "traces the problems of 'real' women in a real world."]

Within weeks of its publication, Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale appeared on The New York Times best-seller list exceeding the success of her first two novels, Mama and Disappearing Acts. Although specifically it tells the story of four African-American women, Waiting to Exhale addresses the dilemma of career women who want it all.

Savannah Jackson, Bernadine Harris, Robin Stokes, and Gloria Matthews, all in their late thirties, are reflecting on their lives, and although they seek to move beyond their pasts, they face uncertain futures. Savannah, having lived in four cities in 15 years, is getting ready to make another career move—from Denver to Phoenix. With a decent job, money in the bank, a nice condo, and respectable car, she has everything she needs but a man. Bernadine, the one with it all—husband, two children, home and condo, BMW and Cherokee—is told by her husband of 11 years that he is leaving her for a younger, white woman. Having placed her own dreams on hold, Bernadine is forced to rediscover them and herself. Robin knows exactly what she wants—love, marriage, and children. With five serious relationships during the past seven years, however, Robin seems to attract the wrong kind of man. Gloria, mother of a 16-year-old son and owner of a beauty shop, substitutes mothering, work, and food for love.

Career advancement, relocation, divorce, aging parents, illness, single parenthood, and the never ending search for love are the problems these women face and the issues McMillan explores. Yet her real purpose soon becomes clear—to sensitize readers to the real-life problems of Alzheimers', AIDS, breast cancer, hypertension, and the need for individual, communal and governmental action. McMillan's work does not match the caliber of Toni Morrison's, Alice Walker's, Gloria Naylor's, or Zora Neale Hurston's (to whom she has been compared), but Waiting to Exhale is an important book as it traces the problems of "real" women in a real world. McMillan has created a series of portraits that reveal the resiliency of the black career woman.

Although McMillan tends to over-explain, a flaw seen in her earlier works, her style is easy, her language bawdy; McMillan herself acknowledges that the novel is X-rated. Waiting to Exhale is refreshingly funny, but its message is hard-hitting—in the end, one must learn to depend on one's self for love and happiness.