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.

Best Behavior by Wendy Francis

Best Behavior by Wendy Francis
Published by Graydon House ISBN 9781525804625
Trade paperback, $17.99, 336 pages

Five years ago I read Wendy Francis' Summer of Good Intentions, about three sisters dealing with the death of their father, and loved it so much that it made my list of the Most Compelling Books of 2015. (My review here)

So I was happy to hear that she has a new book out this week, Best Behavior. Set over a long college graduation weekend, Meredith has to deal with preparing to be an empty nester as her twins, Dawn and Cody, are graduating from her alma mater, Bolton College in Boston.

Meredith is a NICU nurse married to her second husband Joel, a high school guidance counselor. Joel couldn't be more different from her first husband Roger, a highly sucessful Boston lawyer who cheated on his wife and left Meredith when the children were youngsters. Joel is steady, kind and a wonderful stepfather.

Roger is remarried  to Lily, a gorgeous Instagram enhancer (not be confused with an influencer) not much older than his children. They live in a huge oceanside mansion where the kids' graduation party is being held.

Change is hard for Meredith. She is sad that this part of her life is over, and her children are setting out on their own lives now. Dawn will be moving to Chicago with her boyfriend, working at a marketing job. Cody is going to North Dakota to teach at a Native American high school.

Dawn feels deeply, is stubborn and was a ballerina until high school. She and her mother had the typical mother/daughter stresses in high school , even moving in with her father in Boston for a year, which upset Meredith greatly.

Cody is the golden boy. He is rock solid, smart, and a football hero. She never had to worry about Cody, although something is bubbling up about him over this graduation weekend that could possibly spoil the celebration.

Trying to be on her best behavior, Meredith decides that she will be as graceful as Jackie Onassis this weekend. She is tested when Roger shows up uninvited to a pre-graduation dinner hosted by the college. Following the ceremony, Roger hosts a graduation at his second wife's favorite restaurant and much to Meredith's chagrin, Lily is there too.

The story culminates at the graduation party where things all come to a head. Can Meredith remain on her best behavior? Anyone who has had to deal with exes, and manuever family gatherings with gritted teeth, will recognize the issues that Meredith must face.

I enjoyed finding a new slang word here- "dosey", which means a person someone can take in small doses. I have a feeling I will be using this word in the future.

Best Behavior took me back to the days of my sons' college graduations and the mixed emotions that I felt. It's a time of reflection, pride, joy and wistfulness. Wendy Francis excels at writing about families at the turning points of life, and she makes you feel a less lonely as you relate to her characters. I recommend Best Behavior.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on their Summer Reads Blog Tour.

Two End of Summer Books

Reprinted from the Citizen

The last (unofficial) day of summer is Labor Day, with the New York State Fair closing and school beginning that week, so to commemorate the last gasps of summer, this month’s Book Report features two books with summer in the title: “The Summer of Good Intentions” by Wendy Francis and Dan Bakopoulos' “Summerlong.” 

“The Summer of Good Intentions” is set at a family’s summer home on Cape Cod. The Herington family will once again spend all July together, but things have changed in the last year. Parents Arthur and Gloria are now divorced, although Arthur doesn’t understand why Gloria wanted to leave their quiet home in Maine to live in the big city of Boston. 

Oldest daughter Maggie is the typical oldest child, organizing everyone and everything so that things run smoothly for all. She is the one who makes sure that everyone has a new pair of flip-flops and a towel stuffed into a pail to begin the vacation. Maggie is married to a wonderful man, a Boston cop who is a calming presence and a terrific dad to their three children. When she learns that her mother is bringing her new younger boyfriend to the house, she worries how her father will handle it.

Middle sister Jess is trying to balance her work as a high school principal with being a mom to her children and marriage to a man who spends too much time involved in work. This has led Jess into a situation that could endanger her marriage.

Youngest sister Virgie lives across the country in Seattle, where she works as a TV news reporter while she works to get her way into the anchor chair. She works crazy hours, and because of that has had some health problems that she has ignored.

“The Summer of Good Intentions” is the perfect end-of-summer read. Francis brings the reader into the Herington family’s lives, and all of the happiness and sadness of families is one that anyone who is close to their family can understand. You’ll feel like you are right inside the vacation home with them as you read their story.

“Summerlong” also features a family during a summer month. Don Lowry is a realtor in a small college town in Iowa. His business has taken a turn in the down economy, and now he is on the verge of losing the family home, something he has yet to inform his wife Claire of. 

Claire wrote a semi-successful novel a decade ago, but now is floundering in her life. She loves her two children, but life in Grinnell is stifling her. While jogging she runs into Charlie, a young man returning home from an abandoned acting career, and they begin a friendship.

On that same night, Don meets ABC, a sad young woman who returned to her college town after the death of the woman she loved. ABC is a caretaker to the elderly Ruth, a wise and kind woman. ABC believes that Don will lead her to her dead love, and they begin a friendship, as well.

When the Lowrys lose their home, Charlie offers to take Claire and her children in to live in his parents’ home. Charlie’s father, a highly regarded professor at Grinnell College who had both Claire and ABC as students, is in a nursing home with dementia. Charlie finds hundreds of love letters that his father wrote to dozens of women, and doesn’t know what to make of it.

Advertisement (1 of 1): 0:02

Don moves in with Ruth and ABC, all the while looking for a way to get his family back. He wants to save his marriage, but Claire wants to move on. He has an idea for a last-ditch effort to save his marriage: a family vacation away from Iowa. The only problem is that Charlie, ABC and Ruth will be accompanying them.

"Summerlong" is primarily about the marriage of Don and Claire, but it also focuses on the different stages of the characters: ABC and Charlie are young adults trying to find their way in life, Don and Claire are almost 40 and struggling with where they go next to be happy, and Ruth is at the end of her life.

I found Ruth to be the most interesting character, perhaps because she has lived her life. She tells ABC that mothers have secrets and if those secrets get out, it is unforgivable. She knows this from experience.

Both "The Summer of Good Intentions" and "Summerlong" are fascinating reads, not light summer fluff — books that you can easily fall into as summer ends and autumn begins.

The Summer of Good Intentions by Wendy Francis

The Summer of Good Intentions by Wendy Francis
Published by Simon & Schuster Paperbacks ISBN 9781451666427
Trade paperback, $15, 294 pages

As the dog days of summer wind down, Wendy Francis' The Summer of Good Intentions is the perfect book to read at the beach or on the porch.

A family reunites to spend their annual July vacation at their summer home on Cape Cod. Maggie is mom to three, married to a great guy, and the organizer of the family. Jess is a high school principal, struggling to balance her demanding job, her children and a husband who is more interested in his job than his family. Virgie is the single one, a career-driven reporter trying to get a job as a TV news anchor and just staring a promising relationship.

Their parents have recently divorced, and their mother Gloria is bringing her new boyfriend to the house. This makes their dad, Arthur, a mystery book writer, very sad as he doesn't understand why their marriage fell apart.

Maggie fears that her life will become empty as her children get older and need her less. She wants to bring a foster child into the family but must first convince her husband. Jess' marriage woes have led her to place that could destroy her marriage and Virgie's work stresses have made her physically ill.

I just fell into this story, reading it in two sittings. The sibling relationships felt so real, and the story of the three marriages facing different challenges was so engrossing. I felt like I was in the family vacation home, watching these people interact around me.

We are privy to the secrets and feelings that each character has, and just like in life, things happen that can bring people together or tear them apart. Wendy Francis brings to life this interesting family, one just like our own, and she does so with heart and compassion that we can't help but want them to be happy even as the sad things that life inevitably brings each us do their best to bring us down.

This is the second book I have read that features a character who is a hoarder (the other being Mary Pflum Peterson's upcoming memoir White Dresses), and it has given me more compassion for people who suffer from this disorder and for the family members who try to deal with them and the physical and emotional mess they leave behind.

I loved The Summer of Good Intentions, and give it my highest recommendation. If you've ever sat on the beach talking with your sisters, this is the book for you.


My review of White Dresses is here.