Porch Lights

Ms. Frank never fails to amuse and entertain me. Her characters always touch my funny bone and in this novel Annie Britt, matriarch and owner of her home, The Salty Dog down on Sullivans Island, makes me giggle out loud with her thoughts and words. Things like: “I had two hormones left. Benedict and Arnold” and “I still believed I could handle Dr. Love. That’s why the Lord invented dimmer switches. There comes a time when we’re all better off in the dark.” Annie’s daughter Jackie and her sweet ten year old son, Charlie, have come to spend the summer with her. Jackie’s husband, a New York City fireman, recently lost his life doing the job he loved and both Jackie and Charlie were still distraught – so back to the island they came. Can the lovely Low Country and Annie’s love heal their hearts? This novel is a great summertime read or anytime read… Another line by Annie and wholeheartedly agreed with is: “…because a book lets your imagination soar and a movie makes all the decisions for you.”

Objects of My Affection: A Novel

Objects of My Affection: A Novel by Jill Smolinski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A humorous look at a down-on-her-luck organizer, Lucy Bloom, who takes on the daunting challenge of defusing the "professional hoarder" and eccentric artist Marva Meier Rios' Craftman's style home of excess clutter - some useless and some worth a great deal of cash. Lucy, who just wrote a book, that bombed in sales, on organizing your home not only has to be more than good at her job but also be discreet. Heaven forbid if a newspaper reporter would get a juicy story out of Marva's mess! Lucy's carrot at the end of the stick is an added bonus, that hopefully, will pay for Ash's, her drug addicted son, expensive stay at a rehab clinic. But extracting Marva's precious articles from her clenched fingers is not only time-consuming but exhausting and the due date is unfortunately approaching soon.

With "hoarding" now being a household name and object of many a TV show, this is a timely funny, fictional story and repeats what we now know - we emotionally hang onto our "things" to replace relationships and brings us memories of good times & good places.



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The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Pioneer Woman – Black Heels to Tractor Wheels
The Pioneer Woman Cooks
The Pioneer Woman Cooks – Food from my Frontier

All by Ree Drummond

Two delicious cookbooks and a delicious, story about how Ree met her cowboy and married him – the Marlborough Man. All three books will make you giggle out loud as she describes her life before Marlborough Man, during the courtship and marriage, and through the birth of her first child. Ree, brought up in a upper-class neighborhood beside a golf course, also tells of hilarious differences in their lives. Recipes like: homemade Pico De Gallo, Maple Pecan Scones, Spicy Pulled Pork, Olive Cheese Bread, and Chicken Pot Pie will make your mouth water. One favorite: Knock You Naked Brownies, (yes, naked, page 260 of Food from my Frontier) Ree says for the record that she has no clue as to the origin of the recipe name – but that’s probably just as well!

Warning - Be prepared to copy oodles of recipes and giggle like a schoolgirl.


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The Clothes on Their Backs

The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An unusual story of love and loss in many ways, The Clothes On Their Backs is a novel of great depth - Vivien Kovacs is the only child of Hungarian refugees. Timid and mousey, her parents had fortunately escaped their home country only months before the war. They only want to assimilate themselves into the quiet London neighborhood where lonely Vivien grows up - the only child on the block. When a neighboring spinster passes away, Vivien and her mother scoop up the clothing that has been left behind and Vivien begins to identify herself through the material worn on her skin. To her surprise, she also finds a scandalous uncle that her parents never told her about - but then, they never told her anything about their younger days in Hungary or even of other family members. Questioning the boring, quiet lifestyle of her parents, Vivien searches for this outlaw of an uncle that has been labeled a monster of a slumlord - a criminal that has spent many years behind bars, and begins to write his life story - and Vivien finds truth - the reasons for her parents mousiness and her uncle's greediness.

Vivien says, "The clothes you wear are a metamorphosis. They change you from the outside in. We are trapped with these thick calves or pendulous breasts, our sunken chests, our dropping jowls. A million imperfections mar us. There are deep flaws we are not at liberty to do anything about except under the surgeon's knife. So the most you can do is put on a new dress, a different tie. We are forever turning into someone else, and should never forget that someone else is always looking."

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Left Neglected

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three beautiful children involved in everything, one handsome, career minded husband, a busy, satisfying career for herself, a home in a prestigious neighborhood of Boston and a vacation home in Vermont’s ski country – Sarah Nickerson’s life is on full throttle. Sarah prides herself on her ability to multi-task to the nth degree, but everything comes to a full stop when she finds herself spinning out of control on wet pavement headed into work. When Sarah wakes up in the hospital, she doesn’t realize that she can’t see anything on her left – a real, neurological syndrome that occurs due to damage to the right hemisphere of the brain called Left Neglect. Sarah, revved to go back to work, doesn’t realize the long term therapy that may never get her back to the pre-accident Sarah. Slowly, she comes to understand that it may not be such a bad thing….

A book full of determination and tears, laughter and despair, definitely a fantastic read that I really enjoyed and couldn’t put down…


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Another Piece of My Heart by Jane Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Andi always wanted to be a mom – even when she was little, she wanted to fill her home with children. By the time Andi was in her late 30s and finally met the right man, Ethan, she was thrilled he had two beautiful daughters, Emily and Sophia – products of an alcoholic mother, but she still desperately wants one of her own. At the same time, Emily, the older of the two sisters, wanted nothing to do with Andi and went out of her way to make her life miserable. Only once in a while could Andi see through the crack in the veneer Emily kept snug around her. When Emily finally gets caught with alcohol and a secret that will affect them all - things in Andi and Ethan’s home come to a head.

A family knows best how to bring us to our knees in tears. Told through the eyes of each of the main characters, Another Piece of My Heart, will make you laugh, cry and despair over such a thing called a “normal family.”


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Someone like....Adele

Someone Like Adele by Caroline Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Someone like... Adele covers the young star's rise to fame, where she grew up, how close her and her Mum are, the shyness/stagefright that comes out by wisecracking and gabbing on stage, and the relationships that emotionally rent her, giving her fuel for her lyrics. The book also tells of the singers and bands that influenced Adele when she was young and the songwriters/producers that are contributing factors to her success.


Adele falls into one of my top ten songwriters/singers - what an amazing sultry voice. I actually hadn't heard of her until Rolling in the Deep hit me like a pile-driver! Wow - I cranked it up, irritating my daughter who had already heard it probably 100 times on the top ten, and then raced to YouTube to absorb the video. Did I tell you another of my top ten singers - Etta James, also one of Adele's influences.

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