Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson

Celebrity News

Holly Peterson proves naysayers wrong with book

Everyone told Holly Peterson not to write “The Idea of Him,” her novel about a mother of two who wonders if maybe she’s fallen in love: not with her husband — but with the idea of him.

“All of Manhattan did not believe in it,” Peterson said at the book’s launch party Wednesday night in the Four Seasons Grill Room.

When Holly, herself a divorced mother of three, admitted she was difficult in her persistence, her father — former Blackstone chief Pete Peterson — said, “‘Pain in the ass’ is an understatement.”

“My father accuses me of hyperbole,” said Holly, who had a best-seller with “The Manny.” “I know he is wrong, and the thousands of people here tonight agree with me.”

The crowd, actually in the low hundreds, included George Stephanopoulos, Bob Weinstein, Andrew and Ann Tisch, Barbara Walters, Cynthia McFadden, Jeffrey Leeds, Liz Smith, LuAnn de Lesseps and Peter Bacanovic.