If These Walls Could Gawk: Real Deal Reveal

You know those cold case shows like Dateline and 20/20 where they investigate the suspicious deaths of women forever frozen in outdated hairdos and wedding gowns?  Well, even the commercials for those shows make my skin crawl, so I never watch them.  That said, an unsolved murder woven into the plot of an otherwise lighthearted novel is an entirely different kettle of fish.  It comes across as more haunting than harrowing -- and yet also somehow more real.  Which, I suppose, is why I took to Mary Kay Andrews's The Homewreckers.

Savannah widow and historical home rehab maven Hattie Kavanaugh agrees to star in a reality show about renovating a hundred-year-old beach house.  Cheekily called The Homewreckers (apparently, Saving Savannah was too sleepy), it capitalizes on the reality programming mainstays of hairspray and hissy fits, all (un)scrupulously scripted to look off the cuff.  Although more at home in Carhartts than cutoffs, Hattie puts up with the Hollywood hullabaloo in hopes of repaying her boss, who also happens to be her father-in-law.  But she gets more than she bargained for when she finds a wallet that belonged to her beloved high school English teacher, who disappeared seventeen years ago.  What was Lanier Ragan doing in that house, and who was the last person to see her?  Someone doesn't want Hattie -- or anyone else -- to find out and starts sending not-so-subtle warnings.  With her last cent tied up in the renovation (TV gigs being less lucrative than one might think), Hattie literally can't afford to turn a blind eye.  Not only that, but Lanier was more than a teacher.  She was a friend who helped Hattie through a tough time.

Hattie, by the way, is what makes this book compelling.  So many mysteries feature a sleuth with no skin in the game, someone just looking for kicks or fulfilling a promise to a weaker character.  And although those premises can be fun, I often wonder why the "detectives" just don't walk away.  Life's hard enough without goading baddies into tossing bricks through your window.  Yet Hattie's invested, and each and every step she takes toward whodunit rings true.

The Homewreckers covers all the baseboards, from murder mystery to reality TV to family drama to, of course, romance.  With characters and a plot built to last, it's a story you can sink your sawteeth into.  

When it was Still Gold, Before it Got Cold

Skirt: Wild Fable, Target

Top: So, Kohl's

Bag: Skinnydip London, Macy's

Scarf: A New Day, Target; Sunglasses: Party City

Mixed Brag Necklace

Top: Wild Fable, Target; Jeans: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Michaels

Top and jeans: So, Kohl's; Bag: Dancing Days by Banned, Modcloth

Michaels

Scrunchie: Ella and Elly, Zulily; Dark necklace: Cloud Nine, Ocean City; Light necklace: Sonoma, Kohl's

In case you can't tell, these pics were taken in the milder, mellower time known as September.  Bare legs and short sleeves were still a thing, and (big!) jeans were just moving in.  Fast forward to today when I went out to get the mail huddled in my velour sweats and corduroy coat.  "You look like you're in pain," commented the husband as I came back inside.  Um, yeah.  Old Man Winter is not welcome here!

Tonight, when we go out to dinner, you can bet I'll be wearing one of my full-length faux furs.  Photographic evidence to follow.  At some point. 😏

Key West Mess, Thanksgiving Style

Most people are cooking, but here I am booking.  Which is just as well because no one should eat anything I make unless it's the no-bake pumpkin trifle I'm bringing to my sister-in-law's later, and maybe not even that.  I couldn't help but cram in one more cozy before (okay, on) Turkey Day, and this time it's Lucy Burdette's A Deadly Feast.  I never even heard of Ms. Burdette until I typed "Thanksgiving murder mysteries" into my Amazon search bar.  But when this Key West culinary whodunit boasting a cat, key lime pie, and a houseboat popped up, I was sold.  The plot, which centers around a Chatty Kathy of a woman dropping dead during a food tasting tour, is wacky with a side of romance.  Because food-reviewer-slash-amateur-sleuth Hayley Snow (yes, another food critic named Hayley, like in the Lee Hollis series) and her police officer fiancé are getting married the day after Thanksgiving.  Super stressful, right?  But chaos always comes a cozy -- and thankfully subsides by the end.  

Alright, enough book blather.  I need to get back to that trifle.  Which hopefully no longer looks like pumpkin soup . . .       

Main Course Corpse and Other Holiday Horrors

No Thanksgiving menu is complete without a Leslie Meier murder mystery.  So I helped myself to Turkey Day Murder (one of the two novels packaged inside Gobble, Gobble Murder, lest there be any confusion; the other is Turkey Trot Murder, which I devoured last year).  Turkey Day Murder serves up the proverbial Tom Turkey -- or, in this case, TomTom Turkey.  Yet it isn't the bird that's on the chopping block.  It's his minder, indigenous Metinnicut Curt Nolan.  An unpopular firebrand whose dog killed his neighbors' chickens, Curt becomes even more of a pariah when he speaks out against the casino that his fellow tribespeople plan to build.  Disgusted by the prospect of such a lurid display, he instead supports the museum that the town initially promised.

So when Curt turns up dead after a blow from a Metinnicut war club, no one is surprised.  And for once local reporter and amateur sleuth Lucy Stone vows to steer clear.  At least until the ancient and formidable Miss Tilley goads her into launching an investigation.  I know that Miss Tilley is supposed to be the kind of ornery old lady we all secretly love, a more straitlaced Sophia Petrillo if you will, but to me, she's a bossy biddy who should mind her own business.  Yet crime is like catnip to Lucy, so she dives in despite discouragement from her husband and the police, not to mention the threat to her safety.  As always, I'm fascinated by this woman who does things I'd never do, right down to adopting Curt's bloodthirsty dog, all in the context of an everything-will-be-okay cozy.

Because feel-good fiction, however homicidally fraught, is always my happy place.

Fall is for Foliage . . . and Brights and Big Denim

Sweater: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's; Coat: JouJou, Macy's

Shoes: Betsey Johnson, Macy's

Bag: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

 Jeans: Wild Fable, Target

Bag: Betsey Johnson, Amazon; Shoes: Chase & Chloe, Zulily

Headband: Kohl's

Tights: Poof, Boscov's

Top: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Skirt: Rewind, Kohl's

Jeans and bag: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Top: Jessica Simpson Style, Belk's

It's gotten a little cooler, and when that happens, I like to go brighter.  Because nothing beats gloom and doom like a light show of color.  That said, by the time winter blows in, I'll resemble a radioactive, rainbow snow cone.  Until then, I'm ramping up with fruit motifs, a glimpse of faux fur, and some necklaces I made forever ago.  

On an unrelated note, the older I get, the more I love big jeans (as evidenced by the roomy and, yes, rhinestone-studded sparklers I'm sporting above).  Gone are the days when I'd pour myself into circulation-compromising skinnies and think, yep, you're worth suffering for.  This hit home last spring when my mom and I were out to dinner and I had to unbutton my jeggings grandpa-at-Thanksgiving-style to enjoy my crab imperial. 

On another unrelated note, here are the places I wore these outfits: Target, Michaels, the post office, and the doctor's office.  The doc's was where I debuted my big jeans.  

And then, of course, I went back to Target.

Untamed Twin Flames: A Love Story

Everyone remembers where they were on September 11.  I was a sophomore in college trying to decide what to wear to my first Science, Ethics, and Technology class (sorry not sorry if I've said this before in my many years of shameless self promotion).  In case you're wondering, I went with a hot pink floral cami and midi skirt from Fashion Bug, which was where I worked every summer.  Also, it turns out that I was in the wrong class, although the prof let me stay.  But that's my (perhaps inappropriately lighthearted) anecdote.  In Jill Santopolo's The Light We Lost, which was my mom's latest book club pick, things are much more complicated.

When Columbia seniors Lucy Carter and Gabe Samson sit down for their first Shakespeare seminar, they don't know each other or what that day will bring.  Hours later they watch the Twin Towers tumble.  Their bond is instant but their timing is wrong, a theme that defines their next decade.  Both grow to be storytellers, Lucy as a children's television producer and Gabe as a photojournalist.  Yet although they're different in irreconcilable ways, they share a passion for making a difference.

Santopolo writes The Light We Lost as Lucy's letter to Gabe, making it achingly personal even as it reveals the universal nature of love, loss, and fate.  Which is my senior seminar way of saying that it tears out your heart.  

I loved it.

October Outings, Part Two: A Book Club Party and a Baby Shower

Skirt: So, Kohl's

Top: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Dress: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Shoes: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

I know that you've been waiting with bated breath for part two of my October outings.  So here they are, a book club party and a baby shower!  Some of you have asked how the book club works, and in a nutshell it's this.  My mom, sister, and I take turns choosing a book.  We read the book.  Some of us read more quickly than others, or even read more than one book at once.  My sister listens to the audiobooks because she has such a long commute.  We talk about the book, in twos, as we go, on the phone, due to our differing schedules.  Then we talk about the book once we're done reading it, also in twos.  And that's it.  There is no book club meeting.

Until now.  In August, my mom wanted us to get together for a tea party to discuss the twenty books we'd read this past year.  Again, due to those pesky schedules, it didn't happen until October.  But then it overflowed with all the festive gusto that my mom brings to any occasion.  She made food featured in the books (although I forgot to photograph them, the Hope Cakes from Jodi Picoult's Mad Honey were bursting with buttery goodness), she found book-themed paperware, and she displayed the books around her dining room.  She even made a poster listing our roster of titles as well as who had chosen each.  As we sipped our tea and enjoyed our goodies, we answered the questionnaire that she had so thoughtfully prepared.  We discussed our favorite books (not surprisingly, we each picked our own), the books we could relate to, and the books that left us cold.  It was all very illuminating, and I think we learned some things about each other.  

On the fashion front (because there's always a fashion front, even amidst the most intellectual of pursuits), I wore my new blue LC Lauren Conrad top and maroon So skirt with my much-loved Madden Girl T-straps.  I was so chuffed with the look that I wore a dress in the same print for the following day's baby shower.  And yes, it was the shower for which the husband and I took that fateful test drive.  I'm happy to report that I arrived without incident. 

Because like my books, I prefer my journeys to end on a high note.

Sisters Without Misters: A Romcom for Grown-Ups

Elinor Lipman's The View from Penthouse B is very much like her Ms. Demeanor.  Or, rather, Ms. Demeanor is very much like The View from Penthouse B because View came out first.  At any rate, both feature a luxe New York City apartment, second-chance romance, and the juxtaposition of the proper and the salacious, making for a tale that feels appealingly tongue-in-cheek Victorian.  

Fiftyish, widowed Gwen-Laura "Gwen" Schmidt moves in with her divorced big sis Margot at the suggestion of their banker baby sis Betsy.  Betsy thinks that her two near-destitute siblings should lean on each other financially -- and emotionally.  Gwen is subsisting on her late husband's teacher's pension, and Margot lost all her money to none other than Bernie Madoff, her only collateral the penthouse she purchased with her divorce settlement from her indicted doctor ex.  His crime?  Personally inseminating his infertile patients.  But it wasn't the sex that was the problem, as it was, oddly, consensual.  It was the fact that he was shooting (mostly) blanks.  

So the two sisters give it a go, Gwen's near-mousy reserve and Margot's fiery charm (mostly) complementing each other.  They even take in a boarder, the hip yet kind cupcake-baking Anthony, who happens to be unemployed too.  Yet although the three penthouse paupers (cue the Aerosmith) kibitz about nonstarter business ideas and the unexpected reappearance of Margot's ex, the crux of the story is Gwen's reluctance to get back out there.  Although it's been two years since her beloved Edwin died in his sleep due to an undetected heart defect, she can't imagine sharing even an entrée with anyone else.  Nevertheless, she sets up an online dating profile and, to the horror of her roommates, places an ad in The New York Review of Books.  I found her ad to be quaint and endearing.  As for the online bit, the responses she receives leave much to be desired.  But Gwen's journey is a worthwhile one, and I wanted her to get her happy ending.  (Margot not so much, at least not the ending she chooses.)  

Sophisticated, heartfelt, and witty, The View from Penthouse B is a (sometimes dark) matchmaking lark for anyone who never grows up -- or gives up. 

October Outings, Part One: Crabs and Cranberries

October may be over, but its events still demand to be reported, even if I'm the only one doing the demanding.  So I'm moving these momentous (? sure) moments from the back barn burner out into the blaze of the ice cream social media spotlight.

That said -- and I'm sorry if this disappoints -- they have nothing to do with barns or ice cream.

The first outing was a test drive to a baby shower.  I was nervous about having to drive there alone on the day and asked the husband to take me on a dry run.  And it was a good thing I did, because we got lost on account of a teensy mistake I made when entering the address into Google Maps.  (No surprise there, given my issues with all things driving-related.)  But all's well that ends well because we (okay, he) figured it out -- and stopped at an iconic dive for dinner on the way home.  Neither of us had ever been, and it was an experience we won't soon forget.  

The second outing was the Chatsworth Cranberry Festival, which my mom talked me into with the promise of photo ops.  It did turn out to be a golden (and rainbow!) opportunity to wear my new Kohl's Crayola fleece, extremely baggy (but comfy!) Target Wild Fable jeans, and Kohl's So mint green purse.  Also, my old handmade seashell necklace.  Because nothing says fall festival quite like a kids' craft left over from summer.

So yeah, those were two things that happened.  And as per usual, what made them special weren't the activities themselves, but the clothes -- and the company.