Some Assembly Required by Lynn Kiele Bonasia

This wasn’t the fun, light, chick-lit read I was expecting from the cover photo (flip flops on a clothesline) and  blurb from Claire Cook (a fave author of mine). No, it was better. Another intelligent women’s story in the vein of Leslie Schnur (who contributes a quote to the back).

Rose is 39 and trying to make a fresh start in the Cape Cod town of Nauset. She’s gone from writing instruction manuals (quotes from which cleverly foreshadow events at the beginning of each chapter) to wanting to be a journalist. After renting a cottage from Val, she meets her neighbor, Noel, an autistic savant, who is being cared for by the town after his mother dies. A piece Rose writes about Noel ends up in USA Today, where Simon, Noel’s estranged uncle, sees it and decides to travel back to Nauset to make amends. This is a town with lots of secrets and as the town gears up for the celebration of its 300th birthday many of those secrets are in danger of being exposed.

I enjoyed the story once I got into it (and past my preconceived ideas of what I thought it was going to be). The cast of characters is wonderfully diverse, and on the surface seem kooky, but they’re real people with real issues (the mother who lost her child, the man with a dark secret, an alcoholic) and I thought the author struck a good balance between reality and wanting a happy ending. There was also a good twist at the end(one of the secrets exposed) that I didn’t see coming, although it is foreshadowed. All in all a good read about family, love, friendships and the nature of secrets.

Eat This Not That by David Zinczenko

This little book caught my attention because I’ve been trying to eat healthier lately and this simple format (no mention of the dreaded d word) appealed to me. After reading through it (and finding out I’ve been ordering the totally wrong thing at Jimmy John’s) I think I might have to buy it (and I don’t buy a lot of books).

For a small book (it’s a square format – I think to make it easier to take with you) there’s a lot of information packed inside. In addition to the “Eat this, not that” choices for many restaurants, there’s an “Eat this, not that” section for holiday meals and for at the grocery store. Each page also has a “did you know” fact, and sprinkled throughout are “guilty pleasures” (for example, on your burger have a few pieces of bacon, just skip the cheese – as bacon as less fat and sodium) and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” which are those innocent sounding things on the menu that are chocked full of calories or fat.

This is quite the informative book and I would recommend it to everyone.