Friday 5ive- April 9, 2021

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

1)  Sunday was Easter and this year for dessert I ordered a cake from Carousel Cakes in Nanuet, NY. One of my sons is not a fan of chocolate (I have no idea where he got that from), so this pretty vanilla cake with strawberry custard filling fit the bill. Not only was it pretty to look at it, it was tasty too. We ordered it from Goldbelly, and we have had such good luck ordering from there. If you're looking for a tasty treat to send to someone special, head to Goldbelly.com, they have all kinds of foods from all over the country, many from famous chefs and restaurants.

2)  Continuing with the cake theme, my birthday was this past week, and we had a special dinner with our sons at Ocean Prime in midtown. I knew our older son would be there (he lives in NYC), but I was happily surprised to see our younger son from Boston sitting there with him when we arrived. It was such an enjoyable evening, and the guys even had these beautiful flowers waiting for me on the table. For dessert, they brought out two lovely little cakes- one chocolate and one carrot cake. It was a memorable birthday.

3)  Another reason to love Dolly Parton is that she worked with Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams in Columbus, Ohio to create a new ice cream flavor- Strawberry Pretzel Pie. The cream cheese ice cream has strawberry sauce and pretzel streusel swirled through it. It sold out immediately, crashing Jeni's website. The best part (besides the heavenly sounding taste) is that proceeds from the sale go to Dolly's Imagination Library, a program that sends books each month to children from birth to age five. The program has gifted over 155 million books to children. I'm not sure any one person has done more for the cause of childhood literacy than Dolly Parton. Follow Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams social media for more information on the next release. I know I will.

4)  We watched The United States Vs. Billie Holiday, starring singer Andra Day in her Golden Globe winning and Academy Award-nominated performance as Holiday. The movie tells the story of how in the 1940s, the FBI went after Holiday over her singing her powerful song, Strange Fruit, about the lynching of Black people. Day is astonishing in the role, and it reminded me of Bette Midler's amazing performance of a rock'n'roll singer (based on the life of Janis Joplin) in her Oscar nominated performance in The Rose. Holiday battled racism, drug and alcohol abuse, abusive relationships with men, and the FBI's constant harrassment. It is a performance not to be missed, the music is fantastic, and it's streaming on Hulu now.  

5)  I read two books this week. Wendy Francis' Summertime Guests is for those of us who love to people-watch. Set at an historic Boston waterfront hotel, when a woman falls (or did she jump or was she pushed?), the story of how that came to be is told by four different people- a young engaged couple, the hotel's general manager, a couple celebrating a birthday, and a middle-aged journalist whose last article has caused the mob to sue her newspaper. Who is the woman who fell? It's a mystery, and a good book to tuck in your bag when you head on vacation. My full review is here.

Patry Francis wrote a book years ago that has a place on my Favorites Shelf- The Orphans of Race Point. Her new novel, All the Children Are Home, tells the story of a couple who take in four foster children in the 1950s. The characters are unforgettable, including mom Dahlia, who is afraid to leave their home, hard-working husband Louie, older brother Jimmy who is protective of the younger children, Zaidie and her younger brother Jon who came to live with them when their mother died, and the youngest girl, Agnes, who suffered terrible abuse as a baby. How this family loves and supports each other in the face of disdain from neighbors and harassment from schoolmates is heartwarming, heartbreaking and hopeful. I read this book in one day and I will be recommending it to everyone. My review will follow soon.

Stay safe, socially distant, wash your hands, wear a mask and get a vaccine when it's your turn. (I did!) We'll soon be able to get back to some sense of normal if we all do our part.

This post was shared with Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader.

Summertime Guests by Wendy Francis

Summertime Guests by Wendy Francis

Published by Graydon House Books ISBN 9781525895982

Trade paperback, $16.99, 320 pages

If you're the type of person who, when you are staying at a hotel, likes to people-watch and wonder about the lives of the people visiting there, Wendy Francis' novel  Summertime Guests is the perfect read for you.

Riley, her husband-to-be Tom, and Tom's mother Marilyn are at the Seafarer for a tasting for their wedding. Marilyn would love for her son to be married at the Seafarer, whose guests have included everyone from Winston Churchill to Jennifer Lopez. Riley would prefer a small, intimate wedding in a meadow, and Tom is just trying to keeping both women happy.

While they are discussing ideas with the Seafarer wedding coordinator, they hear a horrifying crash and discover that a woman has fallen to her death from a balcony right in front of them. Did she fall, jump, or was she pushed?

 Jean-Paul, the general manager of the hotel, has recently relocated to Boston from Paris with his wife Marie, who recently gave birth to their daughter. Jean-Paul's job has been all-consuming preparing the hotel for its remodel and reopening, and Marie is having difficulty adjusting to motherhood.

Jean-Paul now has to deal with the police, TV news crews, staff, hotel guests, and a huge wedding party set to arrive, as well as alerting the wealthy hotel owner of the situation.

Gwen has arranged for a special birthday weekend for her boyfriend Jason at the Seafarer. They both teach at a college, but what Gwen doesn't know is that Jason has given up on both teaching his classes and working on his dissertation.

Jason has an explosive temper which has resulted in him attacking people unprovoked. He is jealous of anyone who disrespects or flirts with Gwen. He has even hurt Gwen, something that upsets him because his father used to beat him and his mother when he was a young boy.

Claire is a 61 year-old recent widow who has come to Boston to look up her old boyfriend, hoping that he may still have feelings for her. She is on a leave from her job as a journalist at a Providence newspaper, where a story she wrote about a mobster has had repercussions for both her and the paper.

Wendy Francis successfully combines a summer romance novel with a mystery- we know a woman died, is it someone we have met in the story? The book goes back and forth in time over the week of the death, so it could be.

It can be difficult for an author to keep separate storylines equally interesting, but Francis does a terrific job of investing the reader in each of the four stories, and intersecting them at the right time. 

I enjoyed the Boston setting, I felt like we were right there on the water in a beautiful hotel, and found the glimpses of the inner workings of the hotel enlightening.

Now that many of us will be returning to traveling soon, Summertime Guests would be a great book to pack in your suitcase, and pull out on the beach or by the hotel pool while you sip a cocktail and people watch. Wendy Francis pulled me into her story so enticingly that I read it in one day. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on Wendy Francis book tour.