Happy Friday, all!  Don’t you love it when you hoard a new book and when you finally decide to break it out, it turns out to be just the right book at the right time?

I loved Louise Miller’s The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living, so I’ve been hanging on to her second book, The Late Bloomers’ Club, partly so I’d have it for when I really, really needed something special, and partly because I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the first book.

It is absolutely living up to the first book.  It’s been one of those book launch weeks where it’s very hard to concentrate on anything because I’m so busy worrying that I’ve forgotten a podcast I was meant to be recording (yep, that happened) or left time-sensitive emails unanswered (also happened!) or forgot to send signed bookplates for a book event (found them behind a vase of dying flowers!).  Book launch can feel a bit like trying to function while being pelted with ping pong balls, which is not a state of being conducive to reading.

But Louise Miller creates such a fully realized world that the minute you open the book, you feel like you’ve crossed through a covered bridge into a totally different place.  A blurb on the first book described it as Gilmore Girls and Starr’s Hollow– and there’s that same feeling of coming home to this cozy small town, where people are working out real problems, but doing it in a snarky, witty, funny way.

In other news, I am still on book tour!  (When I’m not living in the fictional town of Guthrie with the Late Bloomers.)  I’ll be chatting with Kate Quinn and Elizabeth Wetmore on Monday, with Andrea Penrose on Tuesday, with a lovely librarian at Greenwich Public Library on Wednesday, and with Jane Healey on Thursday.  All events are free, virtual, and open to anyone anywhere, so please do come join me for any or all of them!  Full details (and registration links) on the Events page.

What have you been reading this week?