Friends to Lovers by Sally Blakely

Friends to Lovers by Sally Blakely

Published by Canary Street Press

Trade paperback, $18.99, 352 pages

From the publisher:

Always each other’s plus-ones, but never each other’s real dates, two childhood best friends have one last summer wedding to fall in love in this dual-narrative debut. 

One of The Washington Post’s ‘8 Romance Novels to Read this Summer’!

Best friends Joni and Ren have been inseparable since childhood. So when Joni moves across the country for her job, the two devise a creative way to stay in touch: they’ll be each other’s plus-ones every year for wedding season, no matter what else is happening in their lives.

It’s a tradition that works, until a line is crossed and the friendship they once thought was forever is ruined.

Now Joni is back at their families’ shared summer home for her sister’s wedding, and she’s determined to make the week perfect, even if it means faking a friendship with Ren—and avoiding the truth of why they have to fake it in the first place. How hard can it be to pretend to be friends with the person who once knew you best?

But as sunny beach days together turn into starry nights, Joni begins to question what her life is without Ren in it. And when the wedding arrives, bringing past heartaches to the surface, she’ll be forced to decide if loving Ren means letting him go, or if theirs is a love story worth fighting for.

My thoughts:

I was immediately drawn into Friends to Lovers from the first page. I felt for Joni, who lost her job in New York and hasn't told anyone in her family- or Ren, her best friend since childhood. Ren and Joni had spent every moment together growing up, and when Joni moved away for her dream job, they kept up by being each other's plus ones to the weddings of family and friends. Until something happened two years ago and they haven't texted or spoken since.

You can feel the discomfort leap off the page between Joni and Ren as family and friends gather for Joni's sister's wedding. They pretend to everyone that all is well even as they share a porch bedroom as they always have. 

I liked seeing their relationship through the lens of the weddings they have attended over the years, it's a unique and interesting way to tell their story.

The secondary characters of various family and friends are so well drawn, and in another author's hands it could have felt crowded or confusing, but here it only adds to this wonderful story. The reader feels like we are there at the family vacation home along with everyone else, participating in the week of wedding festivities.

We root for Ren and Joni to figure out their relationship- should they make the leap from friends to lovers? Read and find out, you'll be rewarded. I recommend Friends to Lovers.

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on the Summer 2025 Blog Tours.

Friday 5ive- A Trip to Nantucket

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.

We took a trip to Nantucket with our younger son and his fianceé. It was a glorious weekend, filled with good food and strolls around the pretty town.

1) We rented a Jeep (everyone in Nantucket has a Jeep) and went to Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge where you could drive the Jeep right onto the beach. There were a lot of people fishing, and a sign that read 'Warning- Seals Attract Sharks. Do not swim near seals'. We saw a lot of seals close up to the shore, they must figure that sharks can't come that close to the beach. It was pretty cool!

2) Topper's is a famous restaurant on the island and we had a special engagement dinner there. My first course was a summer fruit and vegetable dish that had such a beautiful presentation, as did the pavlova desset. If you watch Hulu's The Bear, you would appreciate it.

3) One of the highlights for me was a visit to the popular The Club Car for their piano bar entertainment. My son and his fianceé manuevered us to get right up close to the piano where the large crowd sang along enthusiastically to songs like Tiny Dancer (a big fan favorite that night).

4) As we were walking near the waterfront we ran into a wedding party marching down the street, complete with musicians and everyone had a tambourine. I wanted to ask if I could have a tambourine, but I did not. It was like something you'd see in New Orleans. 

 
5) Our trip home took a little longer than planned. We were supposed to fly out of Nantucket on Monday, the day of the horrendous storms and flash flooding in New York City. Our 3:30pm flight kept getting delayed and we figured our best bet was to get off Nantucket and to Boston where we'd stay overnight and get a flight the next morning. 

The only flight to Boston was on Cape Air in a little eight-seater plane. It was kind of like being up in a hot air balloon, very peaceful and slow going over the water. You had to tell the Cape Air agent your weight and all I could think of was comedienne Leanne Morgan's story of going on a small plane and when asked her weight she lied and she knew everyone lied too and she was sure they were going to crash.

 When we went to get our luggage at the Boston airport, my bag was missing. (But my husband's golf clubs made it.) The other couple on our flight were also missing a bag, so we read a sign that said "If your bag is not here, wait 15-20 minutes before going to the Cape Air desk upstairs." The wife and and I waited while the husbands went upstairs and sure enough, our bags showed up 25 minutes later. They arrived on the following Cape Air flight. That made me laugh! 

After a 90 minute car ride from Newark airport to NYC, we were home. Our flight from Boston to NYC took 45 minutes. Only 22 hours behind schedule. What are you going to do?

Our trip to Nanticket was so lovely, we had a fantastic time and I would go back again. Have a great and safe week.

The Friday 5ive is back!

It's been a long while since I wrote a Friday post. I've been busy with running the Book Cellar, traveling and spending time with our beautiful, smart and curious granddaughter, but people have asked me about the Friday 5ive so let's give it a try. Here are five things that caught my attention this week.

1) You can thank this lovely lady here for the return. While attending Adriana Trigiani's comedy and music show at Molloy University in Rockville Centre this week, a woman came up up to me and said "you're Diane- bookchickdi! I read your blog and love your book reviews. I miss the Friday 5ive." Gabriella was so sweet and she took me by complete surprise. No one has ever recognized me from my blog! So Gabriella this one is for you. It was a delight to meet you!

2) I was at the Molloy University theater to see author Adriana Trigiani's comedy and music show celebrating the release of her latest novel, The View From Lake Como. (My rave review here.) The sold-out crowd watched Adriana talk about her family -she is one of seven children- and she had the crowd raoaring with laughter. It was the funniest comedy show I've ever seen and we got a copy of her book too! She had a slide show with family photos, her brother Mike and his band The Predictables played some fantastic music and it was a terrific evening of joy and laughter. If you get the chance to see the show, do it! You can find ticket information here.  Here is a group photo with my friends and I at the Meet and Greet after the show.

3) Before the show, the ladies pregamed at my cousin Mary Beth's home, where she and her friends brought Italian treats to get us in the mood for the show about Adriana's Italian family. Everything was delicious, and Mary Beth's whipped ricotta with honey and herbs was the big hit. 

4) My husband is a big golfer so we watched the show Stick on Apple TV this week. It's about a down-on- his-luck-golfer who years before had a meltdown and now he teaches golf lessons to anyone who will pay. When he finds a young golf phenom he believes he can take this kid all the way to the amateur championship. He along with the young man and his mom, take off in his best friend's old RV for a cross country road trip to make it happen. Owen Wilson and Mark Maron star and it's funny and charming. 

5) The best book I read this week is Jess Walter's So Far Gone. Here's a description from the publisher:

Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons.

Now Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia?

With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he’d left behind. So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and moving road trip through a fractured nation, from a writer who has been called “a genius of the modern American moment” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

It's got humor and heart and what I liked best about it is that the characters feel real- they are flawed but no one is all good or bad. (Well, maybe one guy is pretty bad...) It's another road trip story (like Stick) so maybe that is the theme for this week's Friday 5- road trip. 

Welcome back to the Friday 5ive, see you next week!

It's Summer Beach Read Time!

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Summer means it’s beach reads time and here are a few great ones.

Nothing brings me greater joy than a new book from Adriana Trigiani, and her newest romantic comedy, The View From Lake Como (publishing July 8th), has all the elements that made her a favorite of mine. 

Jess Baratta finds herself living in her parents' basement (which doubles as a bonus kitchen and storage unit when "not housing someone old or newly divorced"). She left her husband Bobby after an unfulfilling short marriage, something her mother Philomena, Bobby, and Bobby's mother cannot comprehend.

Jess works for her Uncle Louie, owner of Capodimonte Marble and Stone (family owned since 1924). Philomena is currently feuding with her brother and will not speak to him, which makes Sunday family dinners fun. 

Now that Jess is back home, unmarried and childless (unlike her older sister and brother), she finds her role in the family carved in marble- she is cook, maid, babysitter, and driver. She will transition to nurse and caregiver as her parents age, like the maiden Aunt Giuseppina whom she was named after. I liked what the author had to say about how we can get stuck in our family roles, anyone from a large family will be able to relate to that.

When Uncle Louie tells Jess that she is going with him to Italy to meet with marble manufacturers, Jess is beyond thrilled. This is a dream come true for her! But fate intervenes and Jess now has to deal with things she never imagined.

Adriana Trigiani writes such rich, fully developed characters. I loved how you always know what Philomena is thinking (whether you want to or not), and Uncle Louie is quite the snappy dresser who dotes on his wife and niece. The fact that keeps his Knights of Columbus tux and sword in his trunk because he is always going to wakes made me laugh out loud (and if you know, you know). 

Many of us would love to have grown up with both sets of grandparents and cousins on the same street, and the dinner scenes had me wishing I could pull up a chair and pass the ravioli. (No one writes a family dinner scene better than Adriana Trigiani.)

I loved The View from Lake Como, it's a perfect summer read to toss in your bag as you head to the beach. It will make you smile and laugh out loud at times as Jess attempts to find her place in this world and in her family. Whether you're from a large family or just wish you were, be sure to pick up The View From Lake Como.

If Mysteries and Thrillers are more your style, there are two I would recommend. Chris Pavone turns from writing characters in situations abroad (The Expats, The Paris Diversion, Two Nights in Lisbon) to write The Doorman about a doorman in a fancy New York City building. 

Chicky Diaz has been at his post for many years, and he knows all about the secrets, love affairs, and wealth that the residents of the Bohemia hold. When he gets entangled with someone who wants to cause trouble at the Bohemia, he has to decide how to handle it in the midst of protests that are beginning to roil the city. It’s a real page-turner about class, race, and privilege.

Laura Lippman takes a break from her more hard-boiled mysteries to write a cozy-type mystery in Murder Takes A Vacation. Muriel Blossom is a middle-aged widow on a river cruise in Paris. When she meets a handsome man on her flight, they have a flirtation and agree to meet later. 

He turns up dead, and people are following Muriel on the cruise looking for something they believe the dead man gave her to hide. Muriel’s experience working as an assistant to PI Tess Monaghan will come in handy in solving the case.

Historical fiction fans will love Isabel Allende’s My Name Is Emilia de Valle set in the late 1800’s. Emilia is an American journalist traveling to Chile to cover the brewing civil war, and to find the father who left her and her mother behind before she was born.

Emilia ends up in the thick of battle and sees the horrors of war up close. Allende does an incredible job of putting the reader in Emilia’s shoes, and showing how women supported the dangerous war effort up close and personal. It’s a fascinating read.

If family stories appeal to you, Kevin Wilson’s Run For The Hills is a terrific novel. Rube Hill shows up at Madeline Hill’s farm to inform her that he is her brother- and that there are two more siblings out there. 

Their father would marry a woman, father a child, and years later disappear without a trace. Rube and Mad travel cross-country to find the other two younger siblings and eventually confront their father. It’s got heart and humor and it’s a good road trip book.

Enjoy your summer reads!

Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778387251

Hardcover, $30, 400 pages

Allison Brennan usually writes romantic suspense novels (I've previously read her Quinn and Costa FBI Thrillers and enjoyed them), and here she takes a turn towards a more cozy mystery-type novel in Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds.

Her heroine here is Mia, an accountant in a small firm where she is about to be named partner. She has worked hard to get this opportunity, but she also knows that accepting the partnership will mean even longer hours at the office.

Her boss books her a vacation at a fancy private island resort and insists she take it. Mia is sort-of looking forward to hanging out at the beach, reading her favorite romance novels, and maybe even having a vacation fling with Jason the hot bartender.

She didn't realize she would get caught up in a mystery when a guest goes missing. Mia and a teenage guest (who doesn't trust the woman her father wants to marry) team up to find out what happened to the missing guest.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of in this fun page-turner of a novel, and it does have a White Lotus feel to the story. Everyone has secrets that appear to be related to the missing guest who was perhaps blackmailing several of the guests.

The hot bartender has his eye on Mia, and after several attempts at romance are interrupted, they finally connect in some steamy scenes. Mia begins to question whether this is a vacation romance or could it be something more?

Brennan does a wonderful job balancing the romance and the mystery/suspense here, and bibliophiles like myself will enjoy and perhaps even recognize the quotes from popular mystery/thriller novels that opened each chapter. And I also loved that her heroine is an accountant, many readers will be able to relate to Mia's job. Careful readers may also be able to figure the secret that Jason is hiding.

All in all, Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds is a perfect beach read for those who like their romance mixed with a lighter mystery. I truly enjoyed it.

 

Three Books For Your Beach Bag

We’re heading into summer reading season and there are some wonderful books waiting to be added to beach bags.

Amy Poeppel writes delightful novels that make me laugh, filled with characters I wish were my friends. Her latest, Far and Away takes readers to Dallas and Berlin as two families swap homes for a summer. 

Lucy is preparing a big celebration for her son Jack’s high school graduation in Dallas when she receives a call from his principal asking her to come in for a meeting-now.

Jack is accused of doing something ‘sexist’, something that is out of character for her nerdy hardworking son. The whole situation spins out of control and Jack will not be participating in graduation ceremonies, and his college acceptance may be rescinded.

After the family is ostracized and their house egged, Lucy decides to take her children to Europe for the summer to let things die down. She goes online and finds someone in Berlin who is looking for a house Dallas for the summer. Perfect- a house swap solves the problem.

In Berlin, Greta is celebrating a big win- she purchased a Vermeer at auction for a client and everyone is talking about it. When her husband Otto comes home and tells her he took a job in Dallas for the summer, Greta is concerned her career achievement is in jeopardy.

Lucy enjoys showing her kids the Berlin she loved spending time in years ago, and while Greta is having a more difficult adjustment in Dallas her husband Otto is thriving.

Once again, Poeppel creates characters that are so fully developed from Lucy and Greta to Lucy’s neighboring in-laws, Otto, and Greta’s American neighbor who befriends Lucy. You feel like you know them well. 

Any mom of teens will relate to Lucy as she tries to navigate Jack’s predicament in this atmosphere of piling on before getting the whole story. 

And only Amy Poeppel can connect a possible fake Vermeer painting, a missing husband participating in a Mars biosphere experiment (or is he in jail?), and a complicated math formula and make it work so brilliantly. Take a trip to Dallas and Berlin this summer in one funny and sweet story in Far and Away, you’ll love it as much as I did.

Grab your beach towel and sunscreen as author Jane L. Rosen takes readers back to Fire Island in her third novel in the series Songs of Summer.

When record store owner Maggie May leaves her Ohio home in search of her birth mother on Fire Island, she may end up with more than she bargained for. 

She discovers that her birth mother is attending a wedding on Fire Island, but when she finds the woman, her mother is the middle of a very public screaming match with the sister she hasn’t spoken to in years. 

Before Maggie decides whether she wants to be a part of this family, she is befriended by a handsome man which leads her to question her own relationship with her childhood sweetheart.

I loved the first two books in the series, On Fire Island and “Seven Summer Weekends” and was so happy to reunite with many of the characters from these two books, including my favorite Shep, an elderly widower. Nobody writes older gentlemen better than Jane L. Rosen.

You don’t need to have read the first two books to enjoy Songs of Summer, but you will appreciate it more if you have. It's filled with humor and heart and I highly recommend all three.

You may recognize Vicky Nguyen from her work as a correspondent on the Today Show. She tells her story as a Vietnamese immigrant in her fascinating memoir Boat Baby.

Vicky’s parents were fearful for their lives following the end of the war in Vietnam. They escaped on a boat to Malaysia and, after finding an American family willing to sponsor them, they settled in Oregon.

Her parents worked hard to build a good life for their only daughter and Vicky wanted to be a typical American teenager. But she still had to face prejudice from her peers. It's an eye-opening look at the immigrant experience.

Vicky became interested in a career in television journalism in college. She worked long hours and moved from station to station to advance her career. She married her high school sweetheart and they faced challenges as they tried to start a family.

If you liked Connie Chung’s recent memoir Connie,  Boat Baby is a wonderful companion read. I found the parts on the news business most enlightening. 

Far And Away by Amy Poeppel- A

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Trade paperback, $18.99, 400 pages

Songs of Summer by Jane L. Rosen- A

Published by Berkley

Trade paperback, $19, 336 pages

Boat Baby by Vicky Nguyen- A

Published by Simon & Schuster

Hardcover, $29.99, 320 pages

Writing Mr. Right by Alina Khawaja

Writing Mr. Right by Alina Khawaja

Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778368663

Trade paperback, $18.99, 304 pages

From the publisher:

The Dead Romantics meets Book Lovers in this charming rom-com about struggling writer Ziya, who’s about to give up on her dream of publishing until she wakes up one morning to find a physical manifestation of her writing muse in her apartment.

Ziya Khan is a legal secretary by day, but she spends her nights working hard to be a published author. She’s spent the last few years trying to get her novel published about a young brown woman falling in love with a small-town brown man—but with no luck.

After one particularly painful rejection on the night before her thirtieth birthday, Ziya decides to give up her pen for good and instead just wishes to be happy. Then, the next morning, Ziya wakes up to find Aashiq, a physical manifestation of her writing muse, sitting on her couch.

Aashiq has materialized to help Ziya find her love for writing again, despite Ziya’s determination to keep her dreams in the past. But bit by bit, Aashiq starts to remind Ziya of why she loved writing and that her words matter more than she thinks. And impossibly, something more starts to blossom between them.

But as Ziya falls for Aashiq, he begins to disappear, which prompts her to choose: her art or her heart?

My thoughts:

Romantasy as a genre is quite popular, and Writing Mr. Right is more of magical rom-com, something you may have seen as a 2000s rom-com movie.

Ziya is very good at her day job as a legal secretary, but she dreams of becoming a published author. Her novel as been rejected many times for being "too small-town" and she is getting discouraged when she finds the physical manifestation of her writing muse in the form of a very handsome man in her living room.

She tells her roommate and best friend that Aashiq is her boyfriend because the truth is too unbelievable. Aashiq even follows her to work where she tells her coworkers that he is shadowing her for a new program. He gets Ziya to open up to her coworkers, become more friendly to them, even going to lunch with them.

As Ziya's world opens up, she finds herself falling for Aashiq and he for her. But how can this relationship work? And can he help her become the author she always dreamed of being?

I like reading books by diverse authors, getting to know more about their culture and family life, and I enjoyed that aspect of the story a great deal.

If you like your romance with a magical touch, but romantasy seems too dark for you, give Writing Mr. Right a look.

Something For Everyone In This Month's Book Report

This month’s Book Report has something for for everyone.

On the nonfiction side, Jeff Hobbs, author of the brilliant The Short And Tragic Life of Robert Peace takes on the timely subject of homelessness in Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children and a Story of Homelessness in America. 

In 2018, Evelyn decides that the best chance for her five children to have a good future is to leave her home in the desert town of Lancaster, California and move to Los Angeles where the schools are better.

She and her husband have $5000 in savings which she thinks will keep them until they find jobs and a home. The money dwindles quickly as finding a place to live within their means is difficult. Evelyn works as a waitress at Applebees, but her husband doesn’t find work in construction.

After a domestic violence incident, Evelyn flees with her children. They stay with her aunt as long as they can, but then they move on to a government system that finds emergency housing in hotels for families. Every night, she calls a phone number and hopes that there is a room for them, meaning that they move every night to a different hotel, often in dangerous areas of Los Angeles.

When they can’t find a hotel room, the family of now six children and Evelyn sleep in their old SUV parked on side streets. Eventually, Evelyn is connected with Doors of Hope, a nonprofit organization that helps families find homes and learn job and life skills that will lead to a better life.

Wendi works at Doors of Hope becoming a lifeline for Evelyn. Wendi is also a graduate of Doors of Hope and knows first-hand the challenges Evelyn faces. Evelyn can be stubborn and Wendi finds it difficult at times to deal with her, but Wendi admires Evelyn’s determination to give her children the best education they can get.

Hobbs shows us the increasing problem of homelessness in this country through the prism of Evelyn and her family. We see how precarious life can be and the daily stress that lack of housing creates in a family. It’s an eye-opening book that will enlighten us all to this important issue. I highly recommend it.

On the lighter side, Vera Wong is back in Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man. In the second book in this charming series, 61 year-old Vera, owner of a tea shop in Chinatown in San Francisco, is hoping to find another murder to solve after  she caught the person who killed a man she found dead in her tea shop in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Guide to Murders. 

This time, Vera becomes involved in the apparent suicide of a popular influencer on TikTok. Once again, Vera collects a group of people who knew the young man, a man with many secrets.

Vera uses a combination of doggedness and feeding anyone she wants information from her delicious Chinese delicacies to discover what happened to the young man she believes was murdered.

When Vera is threatened by a scary man, she knows she is on the right track. Her merry band of people join her in her quest to discover the truth, all while becoming a TikTok star in her own right.

Vera is a hoot of a character, and the things she says made me laugh out loud several times, although I still quibble that 61 year-old Vera is ‘elderly’. (At least in this book Vera begins to question that she is elderly as well so that is progress.) This book is a delight.

Anne Tyler’s novel Three Days in June covers, yes, three days in the life of Gail, a woman whose daughter is getting married tomorrow. Today Gail loses her job at a private school and finds her ex-husband at her door with his cat. 

He is asking to stay with her for the wedding because he can’t leave the cat at home and their daughter’s fiancé is allergic to cats. To top it off, Gail isn’t invited to the spa day with her daughter and the rest of the bridal party and her daughter’s future mother-in-law who has taken over all the wedding preparations. Oh, and she got a very bad haircut at the salon.

Gail is reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge in that she is also socially awkward and tends to not be diplomatic in her dealings with others. Anne Tyler always writes intriguing characters, and Gail continues in that tradition in this slim novel, easily read in a weekend.

Seeking Shelter by Jeff Hobbs- A+

Published by Scribner

Hardcover, $29.99, 336 pages

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man by Jesse Q. Sutanto- A

Published by Berkley

Trade paperback, $19, 336 pages

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler- A-

Published by Knopf

Hardcover, $27, 176 pages