This is my symphony

The Second Sister (NetGalley)
Marie Bostwick
Kensington Press

Lucy Toomey is a campaign staffer, jetting city to city as her boss makes a run for the White House. She works long hours, puts her love life on the back burner, and neglects just about everything that makes life wonderful—like food, friends, family, and fashion. (Her standard uniform is an almost wrinkled navy suit.)

Her sister Alice, on the other hand, lives alone in their family home on a Wisconsin lake. A year and a half older than Lucy, Alice suffered a brain injury in a swimming accident when the girls were teens. Alice is simple, very literal, often stubborn, and sometimes frustrated by her limitations. She’s an incredible quilter and loves animals and her friends with the same ferocity.

As you might expect, Lucy keeps Alice at arm’s length. She doesn’t go so far as to neglect her, of course. Rather, she fulfills every duty to her special sister to the letter of the law. Alice wants for little–Lucy makes sure they vacation at expensive resorts. Not a cent is spared when it comes to gifts. But what Alice really wants is Lucy to come home. For Christmas.  For her birthday. Home to Nilson’s Bay, Wisconsin, to the house on the lake.

And then, as life would have it, Alice is gone and Lucy must pick up the pieces. She plans only a brief stay for the funeral, but finds that Alice has some attached some strings to her will. Strings that Lucy intends to follow to the letter of the law … but of course ends up following with her heart.

Marie Bostwick’s new novel The Second Sister is my kind of chick lit. There’s no jet-setter boyfriend or model-perfect deb. It’s just a small-town girl who thought she escaped and made it big realizing that what really mattered  was what she left behind.

So if you like quilts and girlfriends and wine and dogs and cats and high-school sweethearts and houses by the lake and Midwest manners, this is your kind of chick lit, too.