My One and Only by Kristan Higgins

ISBN:   9780373775576
Grade:   B+
Recommended for fans of chick-lit and followers of RITA awards.

Thanks NetGalley and Harlequin for my advanced read of this.  I'm officially hooked on Kristan Higgins.

So My One and Only is the first Kristan Higgins book that I've read and will definitely not be the last as I lost track of an entire workday while reading this little gem of a book.  This is a fun chick lit read that others consider romance.  Harper James is a divorce attorney, die hard Red Sox fan, and thirty something hoping to marry her boyfriend Dennis.  She was married at 21 and divorced mere months later and is quite cynical towards love and marriage and all that mushy stuff.  On the same night Harper proposes to her firefighter boyfriend man meat she gets a call from her little sister Willa saying she's getting married.  Normally that would be fantastic news but Willa has been married twice before and lucky number 3 is Harper's ex-husband's brother.  And the wedding is in two weeks...on September 11th...in a Dakota state.  After the wedding festivities, Harper's trip home hits a bit of a snag and she is left with one travel option, drive back to Martha's Vineyard with her ex-husband Nick.  The trip home is full of tension due to some unresolved feelings on both sides.  The rest of the story is tons of fun with just the right amount of humor, sadness and a little steamy romance.  Side characters are highly amusing especially a cabbage cooking Russian with a penchant for daytime soap operas.  The writing is superb as long as you're expecting a fun escapism book. 

After reading My One and Only I have to say how much I ♥ Kristan Higgins.  New to her writing, this one has me hooked and I'm eagerly awaiting a weekend where I can plow through a few more of her books.  Even though I had the ending figured out by the third chapter, this was still tons of fun to read.  Like I previously said, I lost track of an entire workday reading this.  While I am a huge chick lit fan, I'm not a fan of romance novels at all mainly because so few of them are well written and there seems to be a gross need to put an oiled and tanned beefcake on the covers.  This is just the type of book I needed to read after a particularly crazy past two months.  It was nice to turn off the neon Open sign above my brain for a day and dive into a fluff read.  Kristan Higgins writes about identifiable characters who find themselves in outrageous situations.  Realistic...from a character perspective yes, from a plot line perspective not so much.  Who would find themselves driving across half the country with their ex-husband who still makes her purr...not many.  This certainly won't win any Pulitzer prizes, maybe another RITA award and I think Kristan Higgins would be more than fine with that.  I liked that this was a fun read and grabbed my attention from the start.  Sometimes the characters grated on my nerves, but that was easily forgiven at the next plot turn.  What I loved about this book was the ending.  It was wrapped up neatly and thoroughly and didn't feel rushed.  That along with Higgins' easy to read writing style has made me a fan.

Go out and buy this book if you need a day of escapism reading especially in the bathtub with your favorite bottle of booze or on the couch with a bag of chips and some chocolate.

If any of you minions have recommendations for which Kristan Higgins books I should read next, pretty please pass them along.

Home to Woefield by Susan Juby

ISBN:   9780061995194
Grade:   C
Recommended for those who want a fluff read packed with humor.  Also to those who have dreams of living the farm life.

Thanks NetGalley and HarperCollins for sharing another great read with me.

Things I learned from reading Home to Woefield:  the gloriously hilarious word Chubnuts that I *have* to work into my daily vocabulary plus actual farm trivia about chicken breeds and radishes (although I still question radish pasta).

Home to Woefield is a story about a woman named Prudence who inherits a farm from a relative.  Prudence at her best is a flake, a good intentioned flake with a little dingbat thrown in for good measure.  She moves from Brooklyn where she tried to compost and use solar panels with comedic results to Woefield Farm in Canada where the prime crop is rocks.  She meets Earl, a cantankerous Canadian old coot who lives on the farm.  Seth, the metal-head blogger and shut-in from across the street gets kicked out of his house and moved in with Prudence.  Sara is the last major character that we meet and she's an 11 year old member of Poultry Club who moves her prized chickens to the farm.  This heap of screwball characters is a recipe for shenanigans and many belly laughs.  Woefield is a pretty pathetic farm as Prudence's uncle did not do a whole lot of farming so along with inheriting the farm, Prudence inherited the debt too.  One scheme after another is Prudence's idea for reviving the farm - from addiction treatment center to creative writing classes to bluegrass festivals. 

There's also an amorous chicken named Alec Baldwin...and a half sheared sheep named Bertie who also suffers from depression.

I lost track of exactly how many times I almost peed my pants laughing while reading.  Seth and his wise ass mouth accounted for many of the laughs while Earl and "chubnuts" came in a close second.  Susan Juby has a knack for finding the ridiculous in her characters and taking it one step further.  The story is told through the four alternating perspectives with each character chapter being a few pages long.  That works fabulously for this book where we get just enough time with each character and get to move on before they get annoying.  Too much of Prudence the dingbat, Earl the crank, Seth the booze hound, and Sara's uber excitement about her chickens could get old fast.  The antics this little gang of misfits gets into are nothing short of unpredictable.  Why the average grade you ask?  The ending just killed it for me.  I adored 95% of  the book and that last 5% had me saying out loud 'you've got to be kidding me'.  To me the ending felt rushed and didn't really resolve anything.  I wanted to know more of what happened to each of the characters and the farm and was just given a teaser ending.  While that type of ending may work for certain titles, this was not one of them.  Had the ending been better this would have been a solid B+ read. 

All that being said, I am curious enough about Susan Juby to read more.  How I haven't read any other books of hers is a mystery especially since she's known as a YA author and I'm living my second childhood.  High fiction this certainly is not, especially since I cannot remember any "classic" or anything in the literary fiction genre which has a character nicknamed Chubnuts.  This was fantastic escapism that you could probably finish in a day or two.  If you're looking for some hearty bouts of laughter and you don't mind a little foul language, this is your book.  If you're anything like me and dream of packing it up and leaving the suburbs for the country, this is your book.   

Susan Juby, please, please, pretty please write a sequel to Home to Woefield!  And could the sequel include pigs in the story?