BIKINI SEASON (Sheila Roberts)

I know!  I hate to be writing about a novel with this title because it is SO chick-lit/romance, but it was also good.  Erin is engaged to Adam, the "perfect" man, but for some reason she is rapidly outgrowing her wedding gown.  Best friend Angela is happily married but afraid that her husband is turned off by her expanding waistline and turned on by his svelte assistant.  Megan is an overweight lawyer in a high stress job, and Kizzie, a small-business owner, has been told by her doctor to lose weight, but her husband Lionel likes her bootie just the way it is.  The four women form a club and resolve to meet weekly to support each other by sharing low-fat recipes.  Soon everyone is losing weight except Erin, the bride-to-be.  As her wedding approaches she keeps running into Dan Rockwell, a dorky old friend of her brother's who works at the local supermarket and has blossomed into an attractive man.  I'm sure you can see where this is all leading!  That being said, Sheila Roberts writes in an easy, entertaining style and makes you care what happens to these 4 woman.  Reading this book would be a wonderful way to spend a day when you just want to enjoy a break from reality, immerse yourself in female bonding, and smile.

THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB (Claire Cook)

I am so jealous of Noreen Kelly!  Yes, she has taken a buyout and agreed to be downsized from her newly merged athletic shoe company, but she has 18 months to enjoy full pay and benefits.  Yes, she has been betrayed by her "boyfriend", Michael, an executive her company who urges her to take the severance package and then stops taking her calls, but he is a jerk and she is better off without him.  At first Noreen is at loose ends, wondering how her career had accidentally become her whole life, but then she meets neighbors Tess, an advocate of green living and air-dried laundry, and Rosie, who runs a lavender farm.  Together the three embark on a goal of 10,000 steps per day, walking in the early morning (in walking shoes from Noreen's company) while getting to know themselves and each other.  This short book was pure pleasure, a sort of coming-of-age story set 20 years later than usual.  If you enjoy novels about female friendships, pick this one up.  You'll love every minute of it!

DEATH AT HILLIARD HIGH (Carole Shmurak)

I attended an interesting talk by author Carole Shmurak a couple of years ago where she described her method of coming up with ideas for a mystery novel, things like wondering what would happen if a body fell out of that tree you are walking past right now.  Carole is a wonderful speaker and discussion leader.  She has visited out library several times to introduce her own novels and to lead our annual "Big Read" discussions of The Maltese Falcon and To Kill a Mockingbird, and she will be here again on November 18 to give us the scoop on this, her latest Susan Lombardi novel.  In this story Susan is invited by former student Shauna Thompson, now an English teacher at exclusive Hilliard High, to help solve the mystery of who is leaving Shauna, an African-American, puzzling messages clues that are obviously racial in tone and possibly dangerous.  During the process of investigating Shauna's problem, Susan (of course) becomes involved in the discovery of a body, the wife of Shauna's fellow teacher Leo Loops.  Loops has disappeared, leaving the community to conjecture about the reason: guilt, fear, or foul play?

What I love about this series is that it is set in the Hartford area with references to local towns and roadways.  Susan Lombardi is a capable, likable woman with a happy marriage, the requisite best friend, and an intelligent, resourceful approach to solving crimes.  As with Beth Groundwater's novel, I would enjoy a bit more ambience and detailed descriptions, but that's just my personal taste.  I'm a person who loves to immerse myself in the atmosphere of whatever I'm reading.  Carole's writing is clean, straightforward, and easy to enjoy.  I am looking forward to the next Susan Lombardi mystery.  I wonder if Susan's husband, Michael (Swash) Buckler, will get tired of cooking and devote himself to vintage autos instead?

TWENTIES GIRL (Sophie Kinsella)

I'm not quite sure why I delayed reading this novel by Sophie Kinsella, one of my favorite chick-lit authors.  I think it may have been because it features a ghost and my first reaction to that was, "Oh, no!  Does EVERY author now have to start featuring the paranormal?"  Well, as it turns out it was well worth the wait.  There is always something beguiling about Kinsella's heroines.  In the hands of many other authors the same characters might be shallow and fluffy, but Sophie Kinsella brings them to life in a way that makes you laugh and cry as they develop into "real" people.

Lara Lington begins as a typical chick-lit heroine, career challenged and unlucky in love, with understanding parents, an unscrupulous business partner, an ex-boyfriend whom she is convinced is "the one" (if only she can convince him!), and a host of not-so-nice relatives.  When Lara attends the funeral of her 105-year-old great-aunt Sadie she meets Sadie's ghost, a carefree, twenty-three year old flapper who cannot rest until she recovers a lost necklace, which she expects Lara to help find against seemingly impossible odds (since Lara is the only person around who can see or hear her aside from when she SCREAMS in people's ears).  With Sadie's help and interference Lara begins to see her life and her relationships in a different light.  Comedy is one of the mainstays of Kinsella's novels and no one will be disappointed here, but there is also a strong element of pathos as Lara begins to look at Sadie's life and her years in the nursing home after a stroke.  One of the best scenes in my mind is when Lara goes to Sadie's nursing home and drops off chocolates and some CDs of music from the first half of the 20th century.  When nurse Ginny starts to play one of the CDs for the residents Lara sees their reactions and suddenly envisions them as beautiful young people dancing the Charleston.  Her sudden realization that every one of them is still a young, energetic person trapped in an aged body is sort of profound, if I may use that word.  It certainly struck o chord with me!
I would wholeheartedly recommend "Twenties Girl".  It was a delightful, uplifting, and satisfying experience!

THE HELP (Katherine Stockett)

It kind of frightens me to realize that I was alive and in elementary school while real versions of these fictional events were unfolding in Mississippi.  I remember hearing about civil rights - the marches, the riots, the speeches, the violence - and seeing the headlines in the paper.  I remember my mother commenting on Martin Luther King's shooting.  My father told us the story of getting on a bus somewhere down South during World War II and being told by a black woman that he had accidentally sat in the colored section and that this was not allowed.  In the late 60's a young black man attended our small, Catholic school for one year and our reaction was fascination and an interest in how he would feel and how he would interact, whether he would feel welcome or out of place in our primarily white (with a few hispanic students) school.  Never did I imagine the kind of everyday abuse and contempt heaped so casually on "the help" and other people of color in other parts of our country.  These events were all happening somewhere else, outside the scope of my northern world.  The Help brings a whole new perspective to the struggle for equality between the races; listening to the audio version truly brings the events and characters to life. The various dialects add so much depth to the story of Aibileen, Minny, Skeeter, Hilly, Elizabeth, and all of the other characters here. 

Stockett writes The Help in the first person, with Aibileen and Minny, who are black maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 60's, and Skeeter, a college-educated white woman of 23, sharing narration duties.  Skeeter is an aspiring writer who failed to catch a husband in college, to her mother's despair.  She is tall and gawky and pitied by her friends, Hilly and Elizabeth, for her lack of social success.  Aibileen works for Elizabeth, a mother without a maternal bone in her body.  Aibileen comforts Elizabeth's children, cooks her meals, cleans her house, shops for her groceries, and polishes her silver.  Short, fat Minny works for Mrs. Walters, Hilly's mother, until Hilly successfully installs her mother in a nursing home and fires Minny, telling everyone that Minny is a thief and warning them not to hire her.  She finally finds employment with a woman who has secrets.  Skeeter recruits Aibileen to help her write a home cleaning column for the local paper, but eventually they end up working on a bigger project that grows to unanticipated proportions, refecting the social changes that characterize the 1960's.

The personalities of the women of  The Help are varied.  Skeeter is at once thoughtful, sympathetic, and ambitious.  Minny is sassy, Aibileen is calm and nurturing.  The women of "the league" are like a herd of sheep, unthinkingly following their leader, but I suppose that this is what they were raised to do.  Hilly is hateful, spiteful, and power-hungry, without an ounce of compassion or generosity.  I feel like I know all of them after listening to this wonderful novel.  It is complete unto itself, but I would welocme a sequel someday!

BACK ON BLOSSOM STREET (Debbie Macomber)

I couldn't resist continuing to follow Lydia's life, now as a married woman with a step-son and an improved relationship with her sister, Margaret.  I love knowing these characters and witnessing the development of Blossom Street, which began as an urban renewal project and has now "blossomed" into a beautiful little neighborhood.  I think there are more still to come, so I will be reporting on those as well.  As I have said before. I'm a sucker for novels that feature yarn and knitting!

A REAL BASKET CASE (Beth Groundwater)

This is Beth's first published mystery and it is a pretty good one.  I was bothered by the local police and their lack of initiative in looking for a killer other than Claire's husband, Roger, but this is probably not far off the mark for any seemingly open & shut case.  Overall, I found the novel intriguing.  Claire Hanover is very appealing in her desperation to prove that someone other than her husband shot Enrique despite Roger's conviction that she has been unfaithful.  She reminds me a bit of the heroines from vintage films like "The Perils of Pauline".  She is not fearless, but she takes hilarious chances that would be stupid in the real world.  Here, however, they are part of the charm of the story.  This novel would make a GREAT comedy/mystery film.  I did look at the ending, as I sometimes tend to do, because I began to suspect who was the actual killer (I was right!), for some reason.  Maybe it was feminine intuition, because it certainly wasn't any obvious clue in the story.  There WERE subtle hints in the dialogue that, in retrospect, led me to a suspect.  This novel lacks the ambience of Diane Mott Davidson's Goldy Bear culinary series, which is also based in Colorado.  I would like to see a little more reference to the setting as well as a little more affection and connection between the ongoing characters, maybe more background to fill out their relationships.  Hopefully these will evolve as the series continues.  I do look forward to reading "To Hell in a Handbasket", and finding out what pickles Claire Hanover manages to involve herself in next!

A GOOD YARN (Debbie Macomber)

A Good Yarn continues the story of cancer survivor Lydia and her customers / knitting students.  I'm really enjoying this series!