How do you pick up the pieces and start again in life? In this gentle romance, a newcomer and a woman, a former local, returning to a Midwestern hometown spark a romance that helps reinvent their lives.
Readers
will be eager and charmed to return to Winsome, Ill., where several characters
from The Printed Letter Bookshop and a host of new ones richly
populate the literary landscape that Katherine Reay (The Austen Escape) presents
in Of Literature and Lattes.
Thirty-one-year-old
Alyssa Harrison left Winsome on bad terms with her overbearing mother, Janet, a
bookstore employee who cheated on Alyssa's dad. For several years, Alyssa
worked in Silicon Valley in California at a health-centric start-up that was
ultimately deemed fraudulent by the FBI. With her career in shambles and money
tight, Alyssa is forced to swallow her pride and return to her childhood home
in Winsome to regroup and put the pieces of her life back together. What will
it take for Alyssa and her mother, living back under the same roof, to make
amends and finally bury the hatchet?
As
Alyssa reacclimates to the quaint small town, she frequents the coffee shop and
befriends the owner, Jeremy Mitchell, a Seattle transplant who overhauls the
shop into a more upscale meeting place the locals resist. Jeremy enlists
Alyssa's help to drum up more business and balance the books. Along the way, he
battles with his ex-wife, who tries to keep him from his seven-year-old
daughter.
A
budding relationship between Alyssa and Jeremy--and their quests to overcome
their respective challenges--anchors the feel-good, wholesome poignancy of the
narrative. Equally appealing secondary characters and storylines bind this
redemptive novel's overarching themes: the power of forgiveness, friendship and
love.
Of Literature and Lattes: A Novel by Katherine Reay
Thomas
Nelson, $16.99 Paperback, 9780785222040, 336 pages
Publication Date: March 10, 2020
To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE
NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission
of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (May 26, 2020), link HERE