Lucy Gets Her Life Back

Author: Stef Ann Holm
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Grade: C

Moving from Boise to the small town of Red Duck, Idaho may seem counter intuitive for a personal chef like Lucy Carpenter but Red Duck has the two things Lucy most needs: celebrity clientele and a down home atmosphere in which to raise her two "lost" boys. Both Jason and Mattie have been struggling since their father walked out on them two years ago and Lucy is happy to find them a fresh start in a small town.

Former pro baseball player Drew Tolman has gone from playing in the Bigs to coaching the Little League but he loves it. He never feels as alive anywhere else as he does on the diamond. So why is it that this year he finds himself watching the stands,looking for one of his star players mothers, rather than the pitcher's mound.

One of the tough things about reading books about single parents when you are a parent is that you tend to question their every parenting decision. Lucy is a good, caring parent but some of the things she did made me want to ask her what the heck she was thinking. The initial move was one of those things and it took me awhile to get over that.

I also had a tough time picturing Lucy and Drew together. At one point he says that the Laker Girls he has over for a party have no substance while Lucy has substance because she is more "real". That seemed pretty darn silly to me -- those girls would have plenty of substance to go with their looks and ambition. Try outs for jobs like that are relentless and difficult. Individual ones might be selfish but really, insubstantial? I didn't buy it. Additionally, Lucy was an "every woman" who simply didn't catch my heart. She was very much like the women I hang out with every day but she lacked their individuality and spark. To do a compare/contrast Goldy the Caterer from The Goldy Culinary Mysteries is an every woman but as a caterer (kinda like Lucy) she describes food in rich, lush detail. She describes her friends, the weather, tooling around town. All that gives Goldy a sense of the unique I don't get from Lucy. I think that might be writing style though. I didn't get a strong picture of Lucy or Drew but I think the author's style is all about what the characters are thinking. In some ways that imparts insight but in a lot of ways it leaves you grasping for details. In this case, I just felt that I might understand what the characters were thinking and feeling to an extent but I didn't get the why. It was like their emotions were all internal and nothing happened that changed or affected them.

My other quibble was with the kids. Being the mother of two boys I have had the chance to observe boy behavior first hand. These kids did not ring true at all. There was an imbalance between their behaviors, attitudes and language that would yank me out of the story on a regular basis. In particular one characters use of the phrase "bang a lang" rang especially untrue. I don't know a single kid with the guts to do that unless they were using it as some kind of signature phrase. It sounded fifties and silly and caused pictures of "Leave it to Beaver" to flash through my mind.

There is a sweet secondary friendship that leads to another character finding romance which I liked but that wasn't enough to save the book.

I struggled to finish but it wasn't a bad book. Just also not a good one.

Tea: Nothing fancy. Maybe a Lipton tea bag with a bit of splenda.