Review & Giveaway - - Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly

Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly

by Marie Bostwick

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Release Date: May 30, 2023

Reviewed by PJ

Esme Cahill thinks she has failed spectacularly: fired from her New York City publishing job, divorced from her husband, and possessing little more than a broken-down car and a pile of unfinished manuscripts, she drives home to Asheville at the request of her late grandmother, Adele, who had begged her, just before she died, to return to the place she grew up.

There she discovers the once-charming lakeside retreat run by her family is sliding toward financial ruin, so with the help of her grandfather, George; estranged mother, Robyn; and a travelling chef Dawes (maker of the world’s best grilled cheese sandwich) they set to work. In the attic, Esme unearths a trove of museum-worthy art quilts, sewn by Adele. Piecing together the inspiration behind them, Esme discovers a forgotten chapter in her family history and her grandmother’s untold story, that of a gifted artist who never received her due.

This is an always-emotional, sometimes humorous, very human novel of what it means to be family—the ties that bind us together and the unintentional hurts that can rend us apart. And, along the way, Esme learns that failure can be the first step toward the life you’re meant to find.

PJ's Thoughts:

Family, connections, following your dreams, starting over, and, sometimes, accepting that the path life leads you to, the one that brings you to true happiness, might not be the one you had planned. That's the premise of this new thought provoking, humorous, quintessentially southern, and deeply satisfying novel by Marie Bostwick. Like a tall glass of sweet tea, a front porch swing, and a sultry summer's day, I couldn't get enough. 

It's the characters who drive this book with a cast assembled by Bostwick that is intriguing, complex, relatable, and authentic. I happily immersed myself into their lives, celebrating their triumphs, mourning their losses, cringing, laughing, and shedding tears in more than a few places. Esme's relationship with her grandmother was lovingly portrayed and easily relatable. I was fascinated with Adele's (the grandmother) story as it emerged, the historical tie-in of which I was previously unaware, and the impact Adele's journey had on Esme's own life journey. George is the kind of grandfather I think we'd all enjoy having and the flashbacks to his love story with Adele were both entertaining and endearing. 

I appreciated the care Bostwick used in creating the characters in this book, the ones mentioned above as well as others who all have some type of role in this story. Even the ones that would appear at first glance to be the villains have complex layers, unseen challenges, and growth that reveal unexpected qualities, eventually leading to understanding, forgiveness, and mended relationships. 

The theme of family is strong in this book: biological family, found family, and chosen family. And, in one particularly poignant scene, Bostwick brings everything full circle, with caramel cake, from 10-year-old Esme and her grandmother to 33-year-old Esme and 4-year-old Hannah. It's a full-heart, tear-inducing, hopeful moment - one more layer of goodness on an already wonderful story.

Add in a backdrop of the soul-stirring, atmospheric beauty of Western North Carolina's mountains, streams, and waterfalls, the richly artistic and quirky vibe of Asheville, and the historical grandeur of the Biltmore Estate and I was well and truly hooked. Give this one a try. It has my enthusiastic recommendation.

One note: don't be put off by the title of this book. While Esme does experience failures (many, many failures), this book is about growth, learning from one's experiences, and picking yourself up and starting over when things go wrong. It has good messages and a successful, happy conclusion. 

*********GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED*********

Have you read Marie Bostwick yet?

Have you ever visited the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC?

Do you quilt or engage in other artistic endeavors?

Have you ever had caramel cake? 

One randomly chosen person who posts a comment before 11:00 PM, June 14 will receive a print copy of Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly. 

*U.S. only

*Must be 18

 

 

Review - - Just in Time

Just in Time

By Marie Bostwick

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: March 27, 2018

Reviewed by Janga

Grace Saunders, thirty-one, met her husband Jamie in high school. They married young, left their native Midwest, and settled happily in Portland, Oregon. Shortly after their move, Jamie was injured in a hiking accident. For almost two years, Grace’s life has consisted of her work as an administrative assistant for a commercial realty company and visits to her husband whose brain injury has left him in a vegetative state. Grace finds her job unsatisfying, but the health insurance keeps her husband in a facility where he receives excellent care. Neither widow nor wife in anything but name, Grace is grieving for the husband she loved and the life she lost—and feeling guilty for wanting more than her life has become.

Monica Romano, forty-two, was widowed eight months ago when her husband was killed in a boating accident caused by his mistress, who survived. Monica was left to run his restaurant and care for her two teen-age stepchildren. Fifteen-year-old Alex is angry and belligerent, and his sister Zoe, thirteen, is desperately trying to add years to her age. The restaurant demands long hours, and the troubled kids are making Monica’s life more difficult. She has a history of bad relationships with Italian men. Her late husband was the worst, and she is “pissed off but not grieved.”

Nan Wilja, sixty-two, was widowed twenty years ago when her husband was killed in a plane crash. Nan regretted that her time with her beloved Jim was cut short, but she took comfort in her four biological children, who were twelve, ten, eight, and five at the time of their father’s death, and in the three children she adopted.  With her children all adults, she enjoys their annual summer reunions complete with eight grandchildren. Her life is filled with gardening, needlecraft, and the nurturing that she feels called to give to bereaved humans and animals. Rainbow Gate, a rescue organization for dogs whose owners have died, is a particular interest. But her lost daughter, a drug addict living on the streets, is a constant source of grief.

Grace and Monica meet Nan and her therapy dog Blixen when the two younger women drop out of a grief support group composed of elderly widows. The three women are different ages with different life experiences, but they bond and form their own support group. The friendship they share sustains them through tumultuous times of grief, growth, and second chances at love.

Just in Time is a heartwarming women’s fiction novel about grief, friendship, and the unexpected turns life takes. Bostwick has a masterly touch at creating female characters who are likable, flawed, and real. She does it again with Grace, Monica, and Nan. Readers will find these women and their stories engaging. Romance readers will be pleased that while the friendship of the three women and their journeys, individual and intertwined, is the heart of the book, each woman’s story has a romantic element with a conclusion that should leave the most HEA-addicted reader smiling. Bostwick is a dependably consistent writer, and Just in Time offers the kind of believable, life-affirming story that has made her a favorite with readers.

Review - - The Promise Girls

The Promise Girls

By Marie Bostwick

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: March 28, 2017

Reviewed by Janga

    

 

Minerva Promise introduced her three daughters to the world as “The Promise Girls,” three test-tube babies who from the womb had been reared to become prodigies in the arts—Joanie in music, Meg in art, and Avery in literature. By 1996, Minerva’s book about her daughters has earned them a certain celebrity, which she hopes to increase through a tour and media exposure. Seventeen-year-old Joanie, the eldest, hates being in the public eye, and when Minerva and the Promise Girls are making an appearance on a popular, national talk show, Joanie intentionally makes an error in her piano solo. The mistake earns her a brutal slap from her mother—in front of the studio audience and the television cameras. The girls are removed from their mother’s care and placed in foster homes.

Twenty-one years later, having settled in Seattle, Washington, where she moved at nineteen, Joanie is a single mother with a seventeen-year-old son. She supports her small family by making reproduction costumes for historical reenactors and others. Meg and Avery joined Joanie in Seattle as soon as they were legally free to make that choice. Meg is married to Asher Hayes, a builder of small homes, and they have a sixteen-year-old daughter. Meg has given up painting to be “bookkeeper, scheduler, office manager, and co-designer” in her husband’s business. Avery lives in a tiny cottage behind Joanie’s home and supports herself through a series of low-paying jobs and part-time work as a storytelling mermaid. The sisters are close, but they have little contact with their mother.

They are initially horrified by the plans of successful documentarian Hal Seeger to make the Promise Girls the subjects of his next project, but when Meg has an automobile accident that leaves her with amnesia and astronomical medical bills, they agree to cooperate for the money. Joanie is angry and depressed by all the memories stirred up by the documentary and by Minerva’s reentry into their lives. Meg is dealing with rediscovering who she is and how she will relate to a husband and child she cannot remember. Avery is trying to survive job losses and a broken heart. As Hal Seeger continues to probe their pasts, old secrets are revealed, new relationships are begun, and old ones are renegotiated.

With this book, Marie Bostwick once again proves herself an accomplished teller of women’s stories. Joanie, Meg, and Avery are engaging characters rendered credibly complex by the scars from their past and by their flaws. They are interesting as individuals and as a trio of sisters whose tight bond does not exclude edgier facets of sororal relationships. Even Minerva proves to be more than the narcissistic, exploitive creature that she at first seems to be. The teens, Walt and Trina, are appealing and believable, and they are integral to the story rather than token kids.

The Promise Girls is women’s fiction, but a romantic thread is part of the story of each of the three sisters. Asher, Hal, and Adam are all likable characters and ordinary guys who are revealed to be extraordinary, each in his own way. The three couples provide an assortment of tropes: a reunion romance of sorts (Joanie and Hal), a marriage-in-trouble romance (Meg and Asher), and an abbreviated friends-to-lovers romance (Avery and Adam). Their stories are substantial enough to satisfy romance readers.

I’m marking this book a keeper. I definitely recommend it for readers who like novels in which women’s experience is central and broad enough to include their roles as daughters, sisters, lovers, wives, and mothers. 

Review - - From Here to Home

From Here to Home

By Marie Bostwick

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: March 29, 2016

  
 

Marie Bostwick introduced the larger-than-life Mary Dell Templeton as a secondary character in her first Cobbled Court Quilt novel, A Single Thread (2008). She then told the first part of Mary Dell’s story in Between Heaven and Texas (2013). From Here to Home picks up the story thirty years later. Quintessential Quilting, the quilting show that Mary Dell has hosted with Howard, her son born with Down Syndrome, has been successful for many years, but the show’s ratings are declining. A new broom at the network who wants to see the show axed succeeds in getting Howard replaced as co-host and making Mary Dell’s new contract a one-year deal. Meanwhile, it has become clear to Mary Dell that she needs to spend more time at home in Too Much. Her mother is growing older and has some health problems. Her twin sister’s children for whom Mary Dell has served as a substitute mother since their mother’s death are also in trouble. Her nephew, Rob Lee, a veteran suffering from untreated depression and PTSD, has hit a dangerous downward spiral, and her widowed niece, Cady, still grieving for her husband killed in Afghanistan, is overwhelmed by her responsibilities for a six-year-old daughter, the family ranch, and Patchwork Palace, Mary Dell’s quilting shop. Changing the location of her show from Dallas to Too Much may offer a solution to some of these problems, but Mary Dell is not prepared to find Howard not at all upset by his firing but rather excited at the thought of an independent life in Dallas where he can begin community college and spend time with his girlfriend. Her “baby” may be looking toward his thirtieth birthday, but Mary Dell finds it difficult to accept his independence.

Holly Silva, daughter of aging star Rachel McEnroe, inherited her mother’s beauty but not her acting skills or musical gift. Thrilled when her agent lines up an interview for co-hosting duties, she is considerably less pleased when she finds that the show is about quilting, a craft about which Holly knows nothing, and she is dismayed to be told that she is expected to sabotage Quintessential Quilting. A quick course in quilting from Cady has Holly feeling more confident about the show, and the firm friendship that develops between her and Mary Dell has them both determined to thwart the plans of the jerk in charge of network programming.

Both women also find their lives complicated by romance. Mary Dell is surprised when her long-time friendship with wealthy Texas hotelier Hubbell James Hollander, known as Hub-Jay, turns into a love affair complete with marriage proposal. But there is a small problem; Mary Dell has never divorced the husband who abandoned her nearly thirty years ago. Holly tumbles into love with Rob Lee Benton, but he has yet to completely conquer his demons. Is an HEA possible for either of these couples.

A new novel from Marie Bostwick is always a treat, and Mary Dell is one of this author’s most appealing characters. So often in women’s fiction, the protagonist spends so much time in introspection that little seems to happen externally in the novel. In contrast to this norm, Mary Dell is a character who acts. She has a long history of tackling the problems life throws at her head on, and she continues to do so. She is not in search of herself. In fact, she has a marked degree of self-knowledge. At one point, she compares herself to Hamlet, recognizing that she lacks the melancholy Dane’s philosophical bent as well as his introspection: “In short, like Hamlet, Mary Dell had suffered the heartaches and ‘thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,’ but unlike him she had survived.”

Bostwick gives her reader a large cast of vividly drawn characters in From Here to Home, but Mary Dell is the heart of the book. In a large sense, it is she who defines home for the others. Holly and Rob Lee’s romance is sweet and emotionally gratifying, but words are inadequate to describe my delight in having a sixty-year-old heroine who lives fully in all the areas of her life. A less gifted writer might have gone for the clichéd conclusion and reunited Mary Dell and Donny, but Bostwick has the changes the years have brought to Mary Dell include more mature judgment and taste in men. Mary Dell appreciates that Hub-Jay is still a good-looking, virile man, but she appreciates him for other qualities as well.

When she was younger, she doubted she would have found Hub-Jay attractive. But she wasn’t young now. She understood things she hadn’t at twenty, thirty, or even forty—the value of steadiness and patience and humor, and that kindness trumped looks any day of the week. . . . She understood too the value of a man who was not threatened by female intelligence or ambition, a man who was comfortable in his own skin and didn’t demand that you turned yours inside out for him.

I loved this book, and I highly recommend it, especially for readers who like women’s fiction with a rich mix of humor and romance.

~Janga

Review - - The Second Sister

The Second Sister

By Marie Bostwick

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: March 31, 2015

Lucy Toomey couldn’t wait to leave her hometown of Nilson’s Bay, a small town in Door County, Wisconsin. She found an absorbing career as a campaign strategist on the staff of Tom Ryland and put in thirteen-hour work days through six campaigns over thirteen years to help Ryland rise from district politics to the Colorado governor’s mansion to a viable candidacy for president of the United States. Her work has also served as her excuse for not returning to Nilson’s Bay, not even for a rare visit. Despite the pleas of her sister Alice, Lucy hasn’t been back to Door County since her parents’ death in an automobile accident eight years ago, and then she returned only for the funeral. Frequent telephone conversations and annual vacations at various points have kept her relationship with Alice close, but with Alice’s impairment, their relationship is hardly that of equals. With her already exhausting schedule picking up speed a week before the November election, Lucy puts Alice off when her older sister calls asking that they spend Christmas in Nilson’s Bay. Less than a week later, Lucy gets word that Alice has been rushed to the hospital. Stuck in an airport on her way to her sister’s side, she receives two pieces of news within minutes of one another: her candidate has won his presidential bid and her sister is dead.

In death, Alice accomplishes what she could not in life. She forces Lucy to come home, not just for the funeral but for eight weeks during the first year after Alice’s death, one of which must be Christmas week. If Lucy refuses to comply with this requirement, an animal rescue organization will become heir to the lakeside cottage Alice called home, a cottage on land worth a half million dollars. Lucy is not comfortable thinking about the cottage where generations of her family lived being bulldozed by developers. Since President-Elect Ryland has insisted that she take at least a month off before she joins him in January in Washington as the newly appointed deputy assistant for intergovernmental affairs, Lucy decides to spend the weeks before then in Nilson’s Bay.

It is not something Lucy anticipates with any happiness. Her childhood was blighted by her father’s undisguised preference for Alice, who was prettier, smarter, and more obedient than the younger Lucy. When a swimming accident left Alice forever arrested mentally and emotionally as the teenager she was when the accident occurred, the Toomey parents focused more than ever on Alice. Lucy had even more reason to want to escape her home. Both Alice and Barney Purcell, Lucy’s apple-farmer cousin, insisted that Lucy was “remembering wrong,” that she had forgotten the good things about life in Door County. As Lucy gets to know three relative newcomers adopted by Alice and known collectively as the FOA (Friends of Alice) and as she reconnects with people she once knew, she discovers her sister and cousin were right. The people of Nilson’s Bay and the place itself have definite charms. The FOA—Daphne Olsen, a Shakespeare-quoting single mother with three daughters; Rinda Charles, an African American evangelical Christian; and Celia Brevard, a middle-school art teacher with a unicorn tattoo—become Lucy’s friends too, teaching her to quilt and sharing their lives and their advice. Peter Swenson, Alice’s lawyer and Lucy’s former crush, becomes more than a friend. Lucy also discovers Alice in a way she never knew her in real life, including a secret Alice had held close for sixteen years. But are all these ties sufficient to make Lucy turn down a West Wing job and plant roots in the hometown she once longed to leave behind forever?

The Second Sister is the story of a woman too busy with a job that substitutes for a life and too determined to leave her past in the past to nurture the tie most important to her or to develop new ones. Although Lucy maintains contact with Alice, she never really listens to her and she knows little of the full life Alice, with all her limitations, has created for herself. Lucy has never formed new relationships either. Her closest friend is a much older lobbyist with whom she shares interests in politics and baseball. Romance has been limited to a series of brief relationships unmourned by either party when they end. Although the relationship between Lucy and Peter adds a strong romantic element to the story, it is essentially a women’s fiction tale of one woman’s journey of growth and self-discovery, much of it connected to sisterhood and female friendships. It is an engaging, emotional novel, one readers of Emilie Richards and the early Kristin Hannah should enjoy.

~Janga