Sunday, July 24, 2011

Summertime Blues Book Review

What does this baby boomer blog about when this baby boomer does nothing but goes to work, goes to two work-out classes from Hell, eats at Al’s Hamburgers on Friday nights, and has breakfast at the Neighborhood CafĂ© on Saturdays? Think I’m a rut? Lol. Hey, the exercise classes are a new addition and I order a grilled cheese sandwich at Al’s Hamburgers!

Getting back to my subject of nothingness, based on this past Saturday morning at breakfast with dear friends, we baby boomers sometimes find conversation challenging. Mr. D was being a bit peckish because his wife and I were discussing our health issues. He said we were talking “old folks’ talk”. Okay, so he's younger than we are--his day will come. It didn’t seem help either when I, trying to polite and include him in the conversation, asked about his next colonoscopy. I mean, doesn’t he watch the tv show, Men of a Certain Age? If you don’t either, you got to! Great insight to guys’ minds, gals. Talking about work was off limits at the breakfast table, and frankly, we were too bummed out over Oslo’s tragedy and the big boys in Washington playing “Blind Man’s Bluff”. And then there’s the heat! I think we are all really tired of hearing the weatherman tells how many days it’s been hot. We know that already! Even if we never ventured out into the front or back yard, our electric bill would tell us.

So as in real life, when it gets too intense for comfort, I turn to books. I just finished Lisa Scottoline’s latest novel, Save Me and I loved it. I’m surprised, too. Not because I don’t like this author, I love her, but because this particular novel starts off with a raging school fire. I escaped from a fire many years ago and once you’ve been through something like that, the senses never forget. But Ms. Scottoline had captured this reader and carried me through the flames into the main story – a woman who had to choose between saving her daughter or someone else’s. Rose does what we like to think we would do—manage to save them both.

Perfect ending? No, only the beginning of a powerful, compelling story of a woman who did the right thing and it backfired. She finds herself being sued and criminal charges filed against her for abandoning the child she carried to safety before going back for her own daughter, Melly. She can lose her home, her husband and perhaps even her freedom. As she struggles to find out what went wrong, why Amanda, the other little girl, went back into the burning school cafeteria, she also has to face her past and the secret she’s kept from everyone, even her husband.

Lisa Scottoline, a prestigious trial lawyer is unique author, one who can write women’s fiction that holds you capture until the very end and nonfiction that will make you split your sides from laughing. I didn’t discover Lisa until I saw her first nonfiction book, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog sitting on a shelf at Barnes & Noble. I normally don’t pick books just because of their title but come on, this was so different and I’m such a dog lover, no way was I going to pass it up. Her next nonfiction book, My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space is just as warm and funny and fast-pace as her first. Lisa also writes a delightfully humorous weekly column that you can read on her website: www.scottoline.com

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