OK, so I packed my travel bag with some heartier reads, but panicked just before we left for New Hampshire. It's a vacation, shouldn't I have something simple and sweet to read after spending the day at the Granite State's kiddie amusement parks? I didn't have time to Amazon browse, but I recalled hearing that Beth Harbison had a new book out. I had read her "Shoe Addicts Anonymous" series with some interest and thought that I couldn't go wrong.
Oh, but I could. Yes, I could.
"Always Something There to Remind Me" (I know the song is already in your head, so here's the video) is the story of first love and what happens when you revisit that relationship years later. Erin and Nate had that typical high school relationship that ended dramatically. Fast forward 23 years and Erin is a single mother raising a teenager and dating a decent guy who wants to marry her. This proposal causes her to think about Nate, and there we go: story time.
Now, maybe I'm not the target reader for this book. I met the guy who is now my husband when I was 18. I don't need to Googlestalk him in order to find out where he lives or what he looks like or if he's on Facebook or LinkedIn. (And, since I just did that out of curiousity, I now know that it's a fairly tedious task to find him on the Interwebs, unless you search his name and college). But we all have people in our past who were, at the time, vitally important and have since fallen from our lives. If we've learned anything from Facebook, it's that it's fun to see where life has taken these people, but that reconnecting with them isn't going to drastically alter life as we know it. Harbison takes this to inconceivable levels with her tale of Erin and Nate. Page after page (or click after click, since I read it on a Kindle), my mind wandered off. I gladly stopped to fold some laundry. Unload the dishwasher. I even watched a few minutes of the local access cable channel's rebroadcast of a school committee meeting. (We're renting a condo this week; can you tell? It kind of stinks to have ready access to all the comforts of home, when those comforts=chores.) Completing the book was a triumph.
I felt cheated out of a good vacation read, so I took to Amazon again to find something more suitable. I was feeling pressed for time, and selected a book that I thought was also by Beth Harbison. Turns out, it was by Beth Kendrick, someone with whom I've had a Kindle affair over the past six months.
Let me explain about the Kindle. My mother bought one last fall to bring on an extended vacation. Upon her return, she declared her preference for reading physical books and offered to let me borrow her Kindle. I've since sullied it with some low-brow reads and free e-books, mainly under the guise of semi-limiting my 9-year-old daughter's ability to read my books (Hasn't worked, as I just realized she's been reading my copy of Emma Donoghue's "Room". Oops. We might need to make this into our very own mother-daughter book club to avoid any later therapy needs.) Beth Kendrick's books were on major discount this spring on Kindle, and I passed many a long night with pneumonia this March with her earlier works.
"The Bake-Off" met all of my expectations for a fun vacation read. Amy and Linnie are sisters who have lived very separate lives until their grandmother intervenes with the request that they replace her in a weekend getaway/baking competition. Both sisters have traits that endear them to the reader: Linnie was a child genius who hit an academic wall and now makes ends meet by working as a card dealer in Vegas; Amy was the shadow sister who perhaps enjoyed her teenage years a tad too much, but now is a dental hygenist and mother of twins. They are both fallible and immensely human. Best of all is Grammy Syl, an active woman in her later years who has maintained a relationship with each granddaughter, despite their problems with each other. She's a fun character, herself, and a great representation of women her age (i.e., not the stereotype). As implausible as the plot details might be (spending a night in jail for editing graffiti?), this was a very fun read, if only to imagine what I might choose to do if given three nights away from reality and responsibility.
Two Beths. Two books. Two points!
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