Next-Door Nemesis

Next-Door Nemesis by Alexa Martin (2023) 338 pages

Collins Carter, a native Ohioan, is living back in her childhood bedroom after a tumultuous breakup with Peter, her boyfriend in Los Angeles, after he took a script she had been working on for years and sold it as his own. She was enraged. A neighbor in LA filmed her as she was vandalizing Peter's car while sob-singing, wearing high heels and a silk robe. The video went viral, pretty much assuring her of being blacklisted in the industry.

When she finally reappears in public in her Ohio subdivision, she's blind-sided again, this time by Nate, one of her best friends from childhood, who had suddenly unfriended her in high school. Now he's a realtor and also sits on the board of the neighborhood's homeowners' association. They spar often, especially after Nate gives Collins a citation for planting a tree in her parents' yard without getting approval from the homeowners' association. This means war! She decides to run for president of the association, an office he is also running for. It's a humorous hate-to-love story with a cast of colorful characters, including Ashleigh and Ruby from high school, as well as Collins's parents and myriad nosy neighbors.

The Fun Widow's Book Tour

The Fun Widow's Book Tour by Zoe Fishman (2023) 252 pages

Mia is a fiction writer with two young sons who was widowed about 3 years ago. In a tribute to her husband's memory, her latest book is a memoir. Reviews haven't been too positive - some reviewers are lamenting that she hasn't put enough of herself into the book. Others readers miss the humor that was in her fiction but not in this memoir.

Her three best friends, who all live out of town, got her through the first years after her husband's sudden death, and they are now working to help Mia get her book at least a bit more publicity by setting up small events in each of their cities. More important to Mia, though, is the state of her friends' relationships to their own significant others. She's trying to be a fixer. She's also navigating her relationship to her father who's been married to his second wife for a few years, after himself being widowed.

This was a very fast read, and as I discovered in the acknowledgements, the book is somewhat autobiographical for this author.

The Hollow Land

The Hollow Land  / Jane Gardam, 158 p.

I can think of very few reads that serve as a better antidote to quarantine and fear than this, the story of two boys, one country and one city, who become fast friends in a sparsely-inhabited former mining area near England's Lake District.  They have adventures, meet quirky characters, and grow, all under a soft English sky.  A fantasy, an idyll - maybe.  All the better!

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman (2003) 269 pages

Alice Thrift has always been an excellent student, but she is finding that good academics (graduating second in her class at Harvard, for example) isn't enough to make her a good doctor. In fact, she's waiting for the other shoe to drop, doubtful that she'll be asked to stay for a second year in the residency program at the Boston hospital where she has been training. If only she weren't so socially awkward, that could help.

Alice finds herself being wooed by Ray Russo, a 45 year-old candy salesman who says he was widowed in the past year. Ray's kind of a slimy dude, always making a sales pitch, telling lies, or worse, telling everyone he sees that Alice is a doctor. This novel shows the progression of Ray's courtship of Alice, as well as her budding friendships with Leo, a nurse she's sharing an apartment with, as well as a couple of doctors she meets along the way.