Famous in a Small Town

Author: Viola Shipman
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Graydon House Books, 2023
Pages: 352
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: For most of her eighty years, Mary Jackson has endured the steady invasion of tourists, influencers, and real estate developers who have discovered the lakeside charm of Good Hart, Michigan, waiting patiently for the arrival of a stranger she's believed since childhood would one day carry on her legacy - the Very Cherry General Store. Like generations of Jackson women before her, Cherry Mary, as she's known locally, runs the community hub - part post office, bakery, and sandwich shop - and had almost given up hope that the mysterious prediction she'd been told as a girl would come true and the store would have to pass to. . .a man.

Becky Thatcher came to Good Hart with her ride-or-die BFF to forget that she's just turned forty with nothing to show for it. Ending up at the general store with Mary is admittedly not the beach vacation she expected, but the more the feisty octogenarian talks about destiny, the stronger Becky's memories of her own childhood holidays become, and the strange visions over the lake she was never sure were real. As she works under Mary's wing for the summer and finds that she fits into this quirky community of locals, she starts to believe that destiny could be real, and that it might have something very special in mind for Becky.

Review: I'd been wanting to try a Viola Shipman book because this names comes up frequently in a FB reading group I follow. The cover of this particular books jumped out at me, as well as the title (as someone who hails from a small town).

I struggled to get into this book, and as someone who vacations in Michigan every summer, I really wanted to love it. Maybe because I'm familiar with the area and the locations mentioned in great details in this book, I was caught up in my own memories and feelings, and couldn't let myself be absorbed into the story. 

As it typically happens, I enjoyed one story/setting more than the other - in this case, I liked the modern-day timeline and the past story felt like it could have been woven in without being an alternating chapter. There were also a couple plots where the outcome was obvious long before it actually played out. I didn't enjoy the mystical theme either regarding the four women. While I've read and enjoyed books that venture into the supernatural, most of the time they're a miss for me.

I would try another book by this author before I crossed him off my reading list for good.