Cassandra in Reverse

Author: Holly Smale
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: MIRA Books, 2023
Pages: 368
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order. . .until now.

• She's just been dumped.
• She's just been fired.
• Her local cafe has run out of banana muffins
  

 Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discoveres she can go back and change the past. One small rewind at a time, Cassie attempts to fix the life she accidentally obliterated, but soon she'll discover she's trying to fix all the wrong things.

Review: This is a blend of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and Oona Out of Order. Cassandra is quirky, and this is just a fun book.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Author: Beth Hoffman
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2010
Pages: 336
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her mother, Camille, the town's tiara-wearing, lipstick-smeared laughingstock, a woman who is trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen of Georgia. When tragedy strikes, Tootie Caldwell, CeeCee's long-lost great-aunt, comes to the rescue and whisks her away to Savannah. There, CeeCee is catapulted into a perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity - one that appears to be run entirely by strong, wacky women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons; to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones; to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police office in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer.

Review: Typically I have a difficult time reading on a plane, the distractions of those around me, turbulence, interruptions by flight attendants, but not so with this novel. This book grabbed me immediately, and my 3+ hour flight was over before I knew it.

I loved the characters and imagine that the author had great fun imagining and writing their stories. Fun, quick, escapist read.

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.

Hotel Laguna

Author: Nicola Harrison
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend 

Synopsis: In 1942, Hazel Francis left Wichita, Kansas for California, determined to do her part for the war effort. At Douglas Aircraft, she became one of many "Rosie the Riveters," helping construct bombers for the U.S. military. But now the war is over, men have returned to their factory jobs, and women like Hazel have been dismissed, expected to return home to become wives and mothers.

Unwilling to be forced into a traditional woman's role in the Midwest, Hazel remains on the west coast, and finds herself in the bohemian town of Laguna Beach. Desperate for work, she accepts a job as an assistant to famous artist Hanson Radcliff. Beloved by the locals for his contributions to the art scene and respected by
the critics, Radcliff lives under the shadow of a decades old scandal that haunts him.

Working hard to stay on her cantankerous employer's good side, Hazel becomes a valued member of the community. She never expected to fall in love with the rhythms of life in Laguna, nor did she expect to find a kindred spirit in Jimmy, the hotel bartender whose friendship promises something more. But Hazel still wants to work with airplanes - maybe even learn to fly one someday. Torn between pursuing her dream and the dream life she has been granted, she's unsure if giving herself over to Laguna is what her heart truly wants.

Review:  I love this time period, I love this style of novel, and I loved the cover. The story itself fell a little flat for me. It was the perfect read for me now though since I'm off to California next week.

Also by Nicola Harrison:
Montauk

The Wedding Veil

Author: Kristy Woodson Harvey
Genre: Fiction / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2023
Pages: 448
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Present Day: Julia Baxter's wedding veil, bequeathed to her great-grandmother by a mysterious woman on the train in the 1930s, has passed through generations of her family as a symbol of a happy marriage. But on the morning on her wedding day, something tells her that even the veil's good luck isn't enough to make her marriage last forever. Overwhelmed and panicked, she escapes to the Virgin Islands to clear her head. Meanwhile, her grandmother Babs is also feeling shaken. Still grieving the death of her beloved husband, she decides to move out of the house they once shared and into a retirement community. Though she hopes it's a new beginning, she does not expect to run into an old flame, dredging up some of the same complicated emotions she felt a lifetime ago.

1914: Socialist Edith Vanderbilt is struggling to manage the luxurious Biltmore Estate after the death of her cherished husband. With 250 rooms to oversee and an entire village dependent on her family to stay afloat, Edith is determined to uphold the Vanderbilt legacy - and prepare her free-spirited daughter Cornelia to inherit it - in spite of her family's deteriorating financial situation. But Cornelia has dreams of her own. Asheville, North Carolina has always been her safe haven away from the prying eyes of the press, but as she explores more of the rapidly changing world around her, she's torn between upholding tradition and pursuing the exciting future that lies beyond Biltmore's gilded gates.

Review: As with most dual-timeline novels, I preferred one time period more than another. In this case, it was the present-day story. I don't know if I was more in the mood for a cute / fluffy story, but I wasn't feeling the historical fiction piece of this novel. The "mystery" behind the veil wasn't really a mystery and the Vanderbilt story added pages, not depth. I love this author though and look forward to reading more of her books.

Also by Kristy Woodson Harvey:
The Summer of Songbirds

The Sweetness of Forgetting

Author: Kristin Harmel
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2022
Pages: 400
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: At thirty-six, Hope McKenna-Smith is no stranger to bad news. She lost her mother to cancer, her husband left her, and her bank account is nearly depleted. Her own dreams of becoming a lawyer long gone, she's running a failing family bakery on Cape Cod and raising a troubled preteen.

Now, Hope's beloved French-born grandmother Mamie is drifting away in a haze of Alzheimer's. But in a rare moment of clarity, Mamie realizes that unless she tells Hope about the past, the secrets she has held on to for so many years will soon be lost forever. Tantalizingly, she reveals mysterious snippets of a tragic history in WWII Paris. Armed with a scrawled list of name, Hope heads to France to uncover a seventy-year-old mystery.

Uncovering horrific tales of the Holocaust, she realizes the astonishing will of her grandmother to endure in a world gone mad. And to reunite two lovers torn apart by terror, all she'll need is a dash of courage, and the believe that God exists everywhere, even in cake.

Review: This book was first published in 2012, but I read a copy that was published in 2022 and included recipes not found in the original. This layered novel was heartbreaking and sad, but full of hope too (and not just because that was the main character's name). 

Some books grab you from the first page, and I was all-in early in this novel. It was obvious to me that the author was writing from a place of experience, and the author's note at the end is not to be missed.

Other Kristin Harmel Novels:
The Paris Daughter
The Winemaker's Wife

The Sisters of Summit Avenue

Author: Lynn Cullen
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2019
Pages: 320
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Ruth has been single-handedly raising four young daughters and running her family's Indiana farm for eight long years, ever since her husband, John, fell into a comatose state, infected by the infamous "sleeping sickness" devastating families across the country. If only she could trade places with her older sister, June, who is the envy of everyone she meets: blond and beautiful, married to a wealthy doctor, living in a mansion in St. Paul. And June has a coveted job, too, as one of "the Bettys," the perky recipe developers who populate General Mills' famous Betty Crocker test kitchens. But these gilded trappings hide sorrows: she has borne no children. And the man she used to love more than anything belongs to Ruth.

When the two sisters reluctantly reunite after a long estrangement, June's bitterness about her sister's betrayal sets into motion a confrontation that's been years in the making. And their mother, Dorothy, who's brought the two of them together, has her own dark secrets, which might blow up the fragile peace she hopes to restore between her daughters.

Review: Sometimes you pick up a book and you're at the right time or right place in your life to read it. This is that book for me. Not only did the plot and characters appeal to me, so did the way the story unfolded. I may have written a different ending, but all-in-all, this was a great story.