The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult will be a big hit for readers with a strong interest in the ancient civilization of Egypt. For me, the book was too heavy in detail about that aspect. I had to drill down to the story of Dawn Edelstein who was shaken to the very core when she survived a plane crash that made her question if her choices in life had been the right ones.

Was her choice to marry Brian, have a daughter, live in Boston, and become a death doula the right decision? Or should she have stuck with her education to be an archaeologist and work with Wyatt in Egypt to complete her research about The Book of Two Ways, a map of the afterlife?

Within the story are these BIG questions: what does a well-lived life look like, what do we leave behind when we die, do we make choices or do that make us, and who would you be if you had picked another path when you were making life choices?

The book is well researched and well written as one comes to expect with a Jodi Picoult book. Picoult has always been one of my go-to authors. I especially have enjoyed the twists she gives in her conclusions to her books. My favorite book was My Sister’s Keeper. Picoult lives with her family in New Hampshire.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin is a quiet book about a newly widowed mother of four who is learning to navigate without her husband Maurice, who had died from a heart attack. Two of the children, the daughters, are young adults and away at school. The two younger sons and Nora are now on their own in Wexford, Ireland, in the 1960s.

Forced to sell the family’s vacation home, Nora is soon back to work after years of being a homemaker for her family. Some of her in laws are helping with the children’s education and other expenses. Slowly Nora reshapes her life and finds new interests so that she can carry on.This is definitely a character driven book as it explores how to navigate own’s life after losing a life partner.

This is my first reading experience with the author Colm Toibin who was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1955. Nora Webster is his eighth novel. Having worked as a journalist for for many years, he is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review, the New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.

Where the River Runs by Patti Callahan Henry

Where the River Runs by Patti Callahan Henry looks at the adolescent we once were and how we got to where we are today. Meridy Dresden's life was all planned out. She had just graduated from high school, she was headed to college in three months, and she would marry her boyfriend Danny. But at a graduation party, a fire breaks out, destroys a landmark of the town, and takes two lives.

Years later Meridy has just seen her son go off to baseball camp before he heads off to college, and she is feeling the pinch of an empty nest. In her home in Atlanta with her successful husband Beau, she learns about a childhood friend being pressed to restore the destroyed landmark back in her hometown in South Carolina. Meridy has been harboring a terrible secret about that night, and she cannot let her friend make such a reparation. Instead, she puts everything at risk as she heads back to South Carolina to see if she can set everything right.

This was Henry's second book in her career of 15 books and counting. As well as writing women's fiction, she also has written the historical fiction called Becoming Mrs. Lewis -- The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. She and her family have homes in Alabama and South Carolina.

Swan by Frances Mayes

Swan by Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun, establishes itself quickly as a Southern gothic novel, the only novel Mayes has written to go along with her memoirs and poetry. The tale starts off promising enough with the bizarre exhumation of J.J. and Ginny’s mother Catherine, who was buried 19 years ago after an apparent suicide. Nothing like this has ever happened in Swan, Georgia, before causing the local sheriff to call in for help from the Georgia State Police.

Since J.J. and Ginny were children at the time of their mother’s death, they were deeply scarred by the event. J.J. retreated to the family cabin after graduating from college, and Ginny headed to Italy to do some hands-on work toward her advanced college degree. Both are called “home,” upon the discovery of their mother’s remains outside of her grave.

Some enlightening news from the sheriff along with some information pieced together from Catherine’s journals and a piece of film provide the siblings with a revised version of what happened one afternoon that ended Catherine’s life.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the book until the ending, the unresolved plot elements leave something to be desired. The book feels unfinished.

Born in Fitzgerald, Georgia, Frances Mayes has homes in both Italy and North Carolina.

 

 

Seven Lies by Elizabeth Kay

Seven Lies by Elizabeth Kay had an interesting concept, and the story worked for awhile until it descended to a point that it does not. A debut novel, it had a delicious beginning but is quick to unravel as the reader learned  all is not as it seems and so wonders, was any of it what it seemed?

Jane and Marnie had been friends for years. Jane was the first of the two to get married, and she was quite happy in her marriage. Tragedy striked, and her husband was killed by a drunken driver. In the meantime, Marnie had been dating and was pretty deep into a relationship with a man when a grief-stricken  Jane sought her out for sympathy. Marnie’s boyfriend Charles resented Marnie’s tender loving care of the grieving Jane, and he worked to put distance between the friends.

Jane’s first lie to Marnie was that she liked Charles when she absolutely abhored him, deciding he was unworthy of someone as good as Marnie. Soon, Charles and Marnie were engaged ad planning a wedding. Jane went along with the marriage, as much as she hated it for her friend, and the wedding went along well until Charles made a move on Jane. Or did he?

Elizabeth Kay works at Peguin Random House and writes on the side.

I'd Give Anything by Marisa de los Santos

I'd Give Anything is Marisa de los Santos' latest novel. In 1997, Ginny realized she was in love with her best friend Gray who had a secret. The couple was part of a foursome including Kirsten and CJ that formed in the ninth grade. They were all four the best of friends until a tragedy happened in their town. Ginny had written about the year in her journal including a terrible secret that has hainted her for 20 years.

Fast forward to 2017, Ginny and Kirsten are still friends but Ginny has not spoken to Gray or CJ since their senior year in high school. Married to Harris who has done something unthinkable, causing him to lose his job, Ginny had to sift through all the parts of Harris' scandalous actions before she could move forward, always with protecting their daughter Avery in mind. 

If having her marriage wrecked was not enough, Ginny's mother was dying of cancer. Ginny, her brother Trevor, and Adela had never really gotten along but Ginny maintained a relationship with her mother while Trevor left home years ago and has stayed away from the family. Ginny would have given anything to reconcile not only with her brother but also with her friends Gray and CJ.E

Marisa de los Santos was an English insturctor at the University of Delaware. She has a Ph.D from the University of Houston. Also a poet, she has written several novels as well as a book of poetry. She is married to David Teague, picture book and middle grades author. They live with their children in Delaware.

Walk the Wire by David Baldacci

Finally, David Baldacci has recaptured what it was that made him a thrilling suspense writer in Walk the Wire. Amos and Alex are involved in solving a woman's murder because when her prints were run, an alert went off in the FBI. The location is in London, North Dakota, where fracking, the military, and Anabaptists coexist.

Some close calls bring in another team of Baldacci characters into this crossover crime novel. Working together, the two teams unravel much of what is going on but still struggle to solve the mystery of the dead woman. Heavy body count in this novel as someone is trying to keep the good guys from getting to the truth.

I have been a Baldacci fan since Absolute Power in 1996 and have read just about all he has written although the last couple of novels seemed "off the mark."

He Started It by Samantha Downing

He Started It by Samantha Downing is a twisted tale of siblings fulfilling a road trip mission as a qualification for inheriting their grandfather’s fortune.  Grandfather once took the three – Beth, Portia, and Eddie – on this road trip years ago when they were children. His will mandates that they must take the trip again to fulfill his final wish of scattering his ashes on the West Coast.

Their journey starts in Alabama with a rented car. Beth’s husband Felix and Eddie’s wife Krista have joined the excursion as they navigate through state after state going to all the sites --  mostly bizarre -- they saw as children. They stay in cheap hotels and eat diner food. It doesn’t take long for nerves to fray with this much togetherness.

Along the way they are being followed by people in a black truck who they believe are doing menacing things like putting nails in their tires and stealing the starter relay. All bets are off when Grandfather’s ashes go missing! There are lots of secrets in this road trip tale including a missing sibling who accompanied them on the original journey and a killer among them.

This is my first Samantha Downing book but then she’s only written two so far. Her debut novel My Lovely Wife was nominated for an Edgar award and is being considered for a feature film with Amazon Studios and Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films. She is a writer with no formal training who lives in New Orleans.

From the Lake House by Kristen Rademacher

From the Lake House: A Mother's Odyssey of Loss and Love by Kristen Rademacher is a sobering look at failed relationships and infant loss. On the rebound from one failed romance, Rademacher jumped into another relationship without really considering important factors like lifestyle and finances. A rather reckless intimacy routine in this rocky coupling led to an unplanned pregnancy.

While the author had no doubts about the pregnancy and the soon-to-be baby, the pairing with the man she called Jason had so many Dead End, Caution, and Stop Signs as to not be viable. After losing the baby in stillbirth, Rademacher nearly lost herself. She did recover over time and removed herself from the toxic relationship although not before a second pregnancy, this one ending in miscarriage.

The book is a testimony to the strength of the human spirit and how one can come back from devastating loss and rebuild oneself with the help of caring family members and friends, even a special one she never met in person.

Kristen Rademacher has crafted an honest and compelling memoir about personal loss. Others who have experienced the heartbreak of losing a child as well as failed love affair will witness a profound healing the way one woman achieved it.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 20, 2020.

I would like to thank She Writes Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan

The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan may be my favorite of her novels as it is a clever tale blending historical fiction about women in the advertising industry with stories about four seemingly unrelated marriages. The five timelines almost made my head spin, but in the end, it was so worth the effort.

The fictionalized account of Frances Gerety’s career in the advertising industry is the frame that holds the book together. Gerety was a pioneer along with others in the book in the advertising industry. She brought the slogan “A diamond is forever” into the vernacular, a signature line still used today after its inception in 1948.

The account begins in 1947 with Gerety hard at work on an advertising campaign for selling diamonds. Evelyn and Gerald start the 1972 timeline as she prepares a lunch for their wayward son who has left his wife for another woman. James worries that his wife Sheila could have done better in the marriage department as they struggle making ends meet as their account unfolds in 1987. The love triangle among Delphine, Henri, and PJ starts in 2003. Kate and Dan are purposely unmarried as they don’t believe in marriage in 2012 when Kate’s nephew is marrying his partner.

The layering of these stories makes for such a rich story-telling experience. The way Sullivan brings the narrative all together in the end will stay with me for a long time proving to me that she is a masteful storyteller. Her revenge scene is on the level of Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats.” No wonder Reese Witherspoon optioned the book for movie treatment.

This book was one of People Magazine’s Top Ten Books of 2013 and an Irish Times Best Book of the Year. Her fifth novel, Friends and Strangers, was released this summer. Sullivan has also written shorter pieces for publications such as The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, Elle, Glamour, Allure, and Real Simple. She has written a couple of pieces about The Engagements and Frances Gerety including one at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-a-diamond-is-forever-has-lasted-so-long/2014/02/07/f6adf3f4-8eae-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html  Born in Massachusetts, Sullivan lives with her family in New York.

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

In Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan, the author unfolds a story about the relationships of the women in a Boston family who have a vacation retreat on the banks of a beach in Maine. The three acres contains the original cottage built by the Kelleher man as well as a more modern house built later. This is not a beach read nor is it chick lit although the cover sure portrays it that way. Maine is a much more layered and intense story in the capable hands of Sullivan whose proving grounds for female relationships occurred in her debut novel Commencement.

The Kelleher women are complicated: Alice, the widowed matriarch, has resumed  her drinking alcohol after a long break as she aches over the loss of her husband Daniel 10 years ago and the tragic death of her sister even longer ago; daughter Clare never has time for Alice because she is busy running a business with her husband and supporting her son’s acting ambition; daughter Kathleen, beloved by Daniel and always at odds with Alice not least of all because of her divorce, is a recovering alcoholic; Kathleen’s daughter Maggie is pregnant and has just parted from a not very nice boyfriend; and Ann Marie, married to Alice’s son Patrick, is the woman who has never been considered good enough by her sisters-in-law to be in the Kelleher family. 

Their stories and secrets develop over a summer when all but Clare end up at the beach property at the same time, something they’ve tried for years now to avoid by divvying up the cottage by months: June for Kathleen, July for Ann Marie, and August for Clare with Alice there in the “big house” throughout. Themes explored in the novel include sibling rivalry, social climbing, the afore-mentioned alcoholism, and Catholic guilt. For the most part, the tone is serious with insertions of dry humor throughout.

Sullivan was a prolific magazine and newspaper writer before she started writing novels. Maine, her second, named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011, was thoroughly enjoyable.

Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

I have loved college novels like Commencement since reading The Group decades ago, and I always wished I could have gone away to college instead of attending a commuter college. In her debut novel, J. Courtney Sullivan, a Smith College graduate herself, features her alma mater in the story of four college gals who were quad-mates and their lives after college. If you know anything about Smith, you know it is a liberal school, and according to one of the characters, there are a lot of “confused people” who attend Smith. If books about open lesbian and transgender folk offend you, this is probably a book to skip. I continued with it because it was the debut novel for this writer, and I wanted to see how she started her writing career.

The four characters who graduated in 2002 are very different from each other: Celia drinks too much and hooks up with all the wrong guys; Bree has enormous family support until she breaks her engagement to a boy back home and takes up with someone her family doesn’t approve of; Sally, a poor little rich girl who has just lost her mother to cancer, and April, the work-study student who has strong opinions and is the ultra-feminist in the story.

The author takes the reader through the foundation of the friendships and then moves the characters to a few years in the future when one of the gals is getting married and the other three will be in her wedding. In some ways, the characters have remained the same and in some ways, they are more so than they were in college.

J. Courtney Sullivan has written for the New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, Elle, Glamour, and Real Simple among other publications. Her fifth novel Friends and Strangers was published this year. Reese Witherspoon has optioned one of her other books for a movie. Born in Massachusetts, the author lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

In a recent online author visit, Kristin Hannah talked about how her book, Firefly Lane, is being made into a series so I wanted to reread it having read it a dozen years ago. It was almost like a new book to me as I had forgotten all but the beginning where two very different young women became lifelong friends. Firefly Lane in a town somewhere in Washington state was where Tully, the often-left-behind daughter of a drug addict, and Katie, the much-loved daughter in a nurturing family, met.

Once the bond is forged, the girls are unseparable through high school, college, and even on the first job. Tully has an ambition to become the next Jessica Savitch, and she wants Katie alongside her. Katie has less of an interest in the news business but she finds herself following along. Eventually Katie tries a differenct direction away from Tully toward her own dreams but the women remain best friends. 

The novel covers several decades in the lives of these two women and should make an excellent series. Each woman encounters struggles in their life and need their best friend right beside them to get through whatever situation occurs.

Kristin Hannah has long been one of my favorite writers of women's fiction. A former lawyer turned writer, she lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest. Her novel The Nightingale, about two sisters during World War II, was voted a best book of the year by Amazon, Buzzfeed, Library Journal, and The Wall Street Journal  in 2015.  It it currently being made into a movie with the Fanning sisters.

Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry

Women's fiction focuses on mothers and daughters a great deal it seems, and Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry is a good example. The three daughters -- Riley, Maisy, and Adalee  -- need to come together as a family and pull off a celebration of the family bookstore as their mother Kitsie has taken a fall down the stairs at home.

Riley, the daughter who stayed home and runs the bookstore, has a 12-year-old son. Maisy took off for California a dozen years ago to live her own life. Adalee is a college student...and flunking some classes as they do get in her way with partying and romance.  With some heavy-handed persuasion, Riley convinces the two to help her get through the party and face the facts that if enough money is not made, the bookstore will become history.

Of course, there are other issues to face as well. Two sisters in love with the same guy doesn't work out so well so there is that. Riley comes face-to-face with dealing with the father of her son that she has never revealed to anyone. A secret illness complicates the situation as well. 

While some might call this a beach read since it is set on a beach in Georgia, I found it to be more women's fiction or domestic fiction. I have been spending time getting to know Patti Callahan Henry's writing, and each book I have read has been quite different. She is not going to be pigeon-h0led as one type of writer.

Her best known novel is likely Becoming Mrs. Lewis about the love story of Joy Davidman and the author C.S. Lewis. A Pennsylvania native, Henry lives in Alabama and South Carolina with her husband and family.

Camino Winds by John Grisham

While I was disappointed in Camino Island, I am liking Camino Winds a bit better. Where the first in the series dissolved into a convoluted plot I didn't even want to follow, Camino Winds is more clearcut. Still, it's not the legal thriller I've come to love from John Grisham.

Bruce, the owner of Bay Books, and his friends stay on the island after the governor orders everyone to leave because of Hurricane Leo. In the aftermath, Bruce and his friends find an author friend dead in the backyard of his property. At first it appears that Nelson Kerr was at some folly being outside in a hurricane but with his dog missing, the group thinks perhaps he was only trying to find his dog. A bit of investigating leads the group to think that this wasn't an accident but a murder.

Kerr blew the whistle on a client some years ago and found himself without his lawyer job but $5 million richer thanks to the governent. A costly divorce decimated the millions, but Kerr found a second act as an author and was making enough to sustain life in a million dollar condo on Camino Island. His fifth novel finished but secured with encryption in his computer -- could it be the reason for murder? Working with the authorities -- which is unrealistic -- Bruce and company try to unravel the mystery.

I have loved John Grisham since A Time To Kill. I look forward to his return to legal thrillers.

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica

When I read a Mary Kubica thriller, I must have the whole day ahead to read because I will not stop until I finish. Once again in her latest, The Other Mrs, Kubica has produced a real page turner of suspense. Just when I thought I had figured it out, I was SO WRONG! Never saw the twist coming. No wonder I couldn’t figure it out!

Sadie has been through the wringer with a troubled son, a cheating husband, and a nervous breakdown on her high stress emergency room doc job in Chicago. When her husband Will inherits a home in Maine along with guardianship of an underage niece, he thinks it could be their “fresh start.” Sadie does not feel as enthused, and the niece Imogen is just another burden added to Sadie’s growing list.

When a murder occurs in their new neighborhood, Sadie is ready to leave, especially after being accused by the neighbors of having had an altercation with the dead neighbor…who Sadie has never even met having plunged back to work in an overly busy doctor’s office while womanizer Will is working part-time while also being a house-husband. It seems all the problems from Chicago have followed the family – including Will’s mistress Camille -- and are now multiplying.

Mary Kubica is a talented storyteller. A one-time high school history teacher, she lives outside of Chicago with her family. This is her fifth psychological thriller, and I have enjoyed them all.

I'm Your Huckleberry by Val Kilmer

With a title like I’m Your Huckleberry, I was expecting much devotion to Val Kilmer’s iconic portrayal of Doc Holiday in the movie Tombstone. With that expectation, I was somewhat disappointed in the memoir, but I did meet a Val Kilmer I didn’t expect: highly intelligent, deep thinking, poetic, God-loving and not afraid to say so.

I also realized I was not familiar with much of his work beyond Top Gun and Wyatt Earp, and that truly, I am not inspired to look into many of his movies. Still, he presented the reader with a meaty reflection on his life from its beginning in as one of three sons of an entrepreneur and his wife to the present day as he recovers from throat cancer and has developed a new direction in his life that is closely connected to no other than Mark Twain.

The memoir is a view of what I expect is the actor’s true self. I admire how he remained respectful of all the women in his life, and how his children are his touchstone. This is not a kiss and tell all but a look at a man that most of fans won’t recognize.

 

Swapping Lives by Jane Green

Married with children on a crazy merry-go-round of keeping up with the Jones, Amber sometimes wishes she could have a different life. Single with no prospects in sight even though she'd like to be more than a career woman, Vicky yearns for a wonderful family life like her brother has.

When the magazine Vicky works for decides to do a Swapping Lives feature, Vicky is the single gal picked to swap places with Amber. While both get what they wished for, the swap also gets them some insights that have them asking, is the grass really greener on the other side of the ocean?

Jane Green's Swapping Lives is typical of her usual chick lit books. Familiar both with England, her place of birth, and America, where she lives now, she intertwines the two settings with her two main characters in this novel. Definitely shouldn't be missed by fans of Green's.

The Other Woman by Jane Green

Meet Linda, the mother in law from Hell, in The Other Woman by Jane Green. Ellie meets Dan who is so tied to his mother that the reader can see the problems coming. Ellie desperately wants to be part of a warm, loving family since her mother died at 13 and she and her dad are somewhat estranged since he has remarried and has another family, but Linda takes over the wedding to the point the only thing Ellie has a say about is her wedding dress, not that Linda didn't try to take that away from her as well. It goes downhill from there.

Linda is a constant point of contention in the marriage, and Dan just will not stand up to her, never supporting Ellie in the hell she is going through with his mother. When Linda ends up holding Ellie's baby before Ellie even sees him after an unplanned ceasarian delivery, that is THE.LAST.STRAW. Or it would have been had not Linda totally disregarded Ellie's directions and ends up falling with little Tom when she should have left him alone in his crib after he had gone to bed.

The injuries to little Tom heal but not the anger Ellie has toward Linda. And Dan doesn't support her...again. This erodes their marriage, and Dan leaves...and goes back home to Mama.

No one tells a domestic story like Jane Green, and I suspect she mines a lot of her stories from life experience as I have read quite a few interviews with her. Viewed as founder of the "Chick Lit" genre, her books are always entertaining...and at turns, humorous. I have read nearly every book she has written, and I am working on making that every book as I approach the last two I haven't yet read.

Born in London, Green worked for many years as a journalist, writing women's features for The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan and others as well as turns in public relations for film and television. She is the author of many bestselling novels, including Straight Talking, Jemima J, Mr. Maybe, Bookends, and Babyville.

The Lifetime Channel adapted three of her books -- Tempting Fate, To Have and to Hold and Family Pictures -- that aired in 2019. 

The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian

The Guest Room in less skilled hands than Chris Bohjalian's could have been a real mess but he handled it very well, if you can say that about sex slavery. The thriller begins with a bachelor party that Richard Chapman holds in his home in Westchester for his younger brother, whose "friend" has hired some stripper entertainment. The men are thrilled when two young "girls" show up and put on quite the show that becomes, shall I say, "hands on."  Richard gets so drunk that he finds himself in a compromising position, which is unlike him, the straight arrow guy married to the love of his life and the father of a sweet little girl.

But that is the tip of the iceberg. One of the girls grabs a knife in the ktichen and kills one of the two bodyguards. Next, gun shots are heard, and the second bodyguard is dead. The partiers are in fear of their own lives, but what they don't yet know is that the "girls" are sex slaves who are eager to escape their captors.

Richard's wife is devastated not only by her husband's failure in his character but also by the damage to their home and their reputations. She's not even sure she can continue the marriage at this point. His daughter Melissa is just old enough to make sense of some of the goings-on includng the term "sex slave."

As for the young women now on the run, they manage to escape both the Russians and the police as they divide up and use their tips and the money they took from the deceased bodyguards to stay in hotels. They plan to get far away to Los Angeles but they want the heat to die down first.

Chris Bohjalian keeps the pages turning in this crime thriller. He is the author of 20 novels including  Midwives (1997), The Sandcastle Girls (2012), and The Flight Attendant (2018). Three of his novels are in devlopment for films -- The Sandcastle Girls, The Sleepwalker, and The Flight Attendant.

The DInner List by Rebecca Serle

The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle is about Sabrina, a young woman whose father left her when she was just 5 and whose love of her life left her again and again. Her roommate once asked her, if you could have dinenr with 5 people living or dead, who would you choose? Sabrina is able to make a list but it changes by the time she actually attends this "dinner."

She is dazed when she walks into her birthday dinner with Jessica, no longer her roommate but married with a child, to find all the people on her "dinner list:" her father Robert, a favorite professor, Audrey Hepburn, her "lost" love Tobias, and Jessica, who hasn't had time for the friendship in a long time.

The story proceeds with alternate chapters of the dinner conversation interwoven with what happened during the course of events from the time Sabrina and Jessica were roommates to the present time.  Slowly the reason for each guest is revealed, and Sabrina works through many things from her life.

Who would you choose? I'm sure my answer would change time and again, but for now I choose my grandmother Cora because I'd like to hear about her being a teacher and what life was like for her as a young woman, my great-great-grandfather Philip because I want to know what happened to him because I cannot find him anywhere, Johnny Crawford because I enjoyed him so much on The Rifleman, Hailey Mills because she was my favorite actress growing up, and Dale Evans because her books were very inspirational to me.

This is my second outing with Rebecca Serle, and I have enjoyed her writing very much. Her latest book, In Five Years, asks the question, where do you see yourself in five years? I have to wonder if this is going to be the pattern of her books, exploring those questions we ask of oursevles and others. 

Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel

In Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel, Frances attends a wedding in Florida only to meet her true love. Dennis is a law student when they meet at Stiltsville where his grandfather built a stilted house in 1945. Frances worked in a bank in Atlanta, the area from which she was from.

This historical fiction novel covers the lives of Frances and Dennis over the course of their courtship, wedding, baby Margo, home ownership, bigger home, unemployment, hurricanes, etc. Miami truly becomes Frances' home, although there will come a day when she lives it behind.

I enjoyed learning about the history of Stiltisville and its change from private ownership to state ownership. 

I really enjoy Susanna Daniel's writing of literary fiction. I have also read her book Sea Creatures and eagerly await her next book, whenever that occurs.