Towanda!

Such a memorable line from such a memorable movie. If you haven't seen it yet, you should. This line is from the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes". It made an excellent blog title for the book I'm about to review.

As most of you know I fell into reader's block not too long ago where the book I was reading was disappointing. I didn't want to pick up another romance right after it because I didn't want my letdown mood from the first book influence my feelings on the next book. So I gave myself some time off and this week I happened to receive a book from Goodreads.

This is the book:

(Image from Goodreads)

The book is about a woman who after having a stressful couple of days, agrees to accept an invitation to stay the summer with Will's, an old college friend's, elderly great-aunts. She's an aspiring author who thinks this will be the perfect time for her to focus on writing a story loosely based on her own complicated upbringing. In the process of settling in she learns some of the family history and is instantly enamored with it. As she tries to keep her friendship with Will just that, she's drawn to the darker side of his family and also his black-sheep cousin Jake. Living in a house with so much tragic lore leads her to scrap her original novel plans and switch gears into writing about a long ago incident in Will's family.


I don't want to go into too much depth about the story because it's a great story that needs to be read and not just left to it's summary to do it justice.

In this book we get a little early 1900's southern murder mystery, a bit of romance, and a touch of struggling to find oneself. To me this book was a cross between Fried Green Tomatoes and The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. From the first page this book kept my attention. Even though the writing style allowed us flashbacks and alternative point's of view it really flowed. For me the writing style actually kept my attention better than most books do. It was like getting a fresh look into things happening in the book. Some of the flashbacks gave us glimpses into the history of the town and Will's family, whereas some of the alternate points of views gave us glimpses in to some secondary characters heads and lives. You know how sometimes you read a book and it plays out in your mind as a movie? This was definitely one of those types of books. The story and characters embed themselves in your head and sticks with you long after you're done reading. When I wasn't reading I wanted to be or I was thinking about the characters. The murder plot keeps you guessing until the very end. I carried this book around with me for a whole day after finishing it. I really wanted the story to continue on and didn't want to have to part with the tale and characters. Anyone I've talked to this week has heard of this book or has had me show it to them and say, "You HAVE to read this.".  If you're looking for a break from you're regular romance reading I really suggest you guys check this one out!