Where’d you go, Bernadette Maria Semple Little Brown Chick lit plots and characters are like so many cut-out cookies, after a while. You’ve got the caterpillar career girl, the stuck-up (but oh-so-handsome) object of her affections. The mishaps. Enter heart-of-gold True Love to sweep her off her feet. The same can be said of YA …
Vinegar Girl (NetGalley) Anne Tyler Hogarth/Crown Publishing I’m not one for modern novels that piggy back on a great work of literature. Chances are I’ve already read the classic, so the broad strokes of the contemporary retelling seem forced. And I tend to nitpick, as well: “Well, that didn’t happen in The Great Classic” or “Famous …
The Canterbury Sisters Kim Wright Simon & Schuster Chick lit for women of a certain age–it’s difficult to come by. Most of the chick lit I’ve read falls into the twenty-something-my-boyfriend-left-me or the twenty-something-I’ll-never-find-Mr.-Right category. And if you’ve read my last post (link) you understand that I’ve been there and done that. But every once …
The Brontë Plot (NetGalley) Katherine Reay Thomas Nelson Lucy Alling is Sid McKenna’s Girl Friday at Sid McKenna Antiques and Design–most days she straightens, dusts, rearranges, and parcel-posts for one of Chicago’s premier interior designers. But Wednesday was Book Day, a day Lucy could lose herself in the rare and sometimes just plain quirky books she …
Lawyer For the Dog Lee Robinson Thomas Dunne Books This was probably one of those times when I did choose a book by its cover. Take a look—how can you resist that little guy’s face?! (My first dog was a schnauzer, so that didn’t hurt either!) Lee Robinson’s Lawyer For the Dog is pretty simple …
The Sound of Glass (NetGalley) Karen White New American Library You’re strong at the broken places. This novel starts with a bang–literally–on a hot summer night in Beaufort, South Carolina. Edith Heywood senses an eerie change in the night sounds as she works in her attic studio, then sees a flash of fire explode across …
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 …
Leaving Time Jodi Picoult Ballantine Books From the first page of Jodi Piccoult’s new novel, we’re drawn into the story of Jenna Metcalf and her mother, Alice, separated in a terrible accident years before. Each narrates her journey as she searches and longs for the One Missing and the love they have for each other …
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt Caroline Preston Harper Collins One of my most precious possessions is a “School Friendship Book” I found at a flea market several years ago. It is the real deal. None of this photos cropped, matted, and embellished with stickers stuff that we do today. No, this is a leather journal-sized wonder with dusty …
Before I go Colleen Oakley Simon and Schuster “It’s back,” Daisy Richmond tells her husband Jack. And with those words, the young couple’s life takes another unexpected turn. Three years ago Daisy battled cancer and, so far, seemed to have won. She and Jack picked up life where they left off—Daisy doing graduate work in …
This is my symphony 