Welcome to Thursday! The weather has been beautiful here this week, nice enough to walk in the morning. Even better, perfect weather to sit out on the screened in porch and watch lightning bugs and rabbits at twilight. I love lightning bugs, and missed them when I was in Florida and Arizona. I never even thought about that until I moved back to the Midwest. How about you? How’s your weather? What have you been doing and reading this week?
Have any of you read Ashley Ream’s The Peculiar Gift of July? I’ve never read her books before. I’ve read fifty pages of this one, and I have high hopes, if I don’t get bored. I like the atmosphere and setting in this one. Here’s the description.
With a dash of magic and a cast of oddball, small-town characters, this feel-good novel explores forgiveness, family, and the sense of humor it takes to live with the ones we love the most.
Ebey’s End is a small town on an island off the Pacific coast, reachable only by ferry (assuming the gods are with you and it’s not a Tuesday). It’s a comfortable, familiar (but okay, fine, sometimes lonely) life for its resident grocer Anita Odom. That is, until fourteen-year-old July shows up on her doorstep.
Taking in the recently orphaned daughter of an estranged cousin had not been on Anita’s to-do list. In fact, it’s a terrible idea. Anita is ill-suited, ill-prepared, and absolutely certain the entire enterprise will end in disaster—for both of them.
From the moment she arrives, July seems to “know” what each customer at the Island Grocery needs. They’re small things: a housekeeping magazine slipped into old Mr. Daly’s basket or a coconut cream pie pressed into the hands of Pastor Chet. But one by one, these gifts start to change the lives of nearly everyone in town in ways much larger than they—or July—could have imagined.
It’s not long before secrets are exposed and questions emerge, and everyone in Ebey’s End has to open their hearts a little wider to make room for it all.
Do you know how a book welcomes you in? The Peculiar Gift of July does that. I already have a book scheduled for tomorrow. We’ll see if I finish this one by Saturday.
What are you reading this week?
