by Susan Wingate
ebooksonthe.net, a subsidiary of Write Words, Inc.
$5.50
Reviewed by Charlotte Rains Dixon
As the novel Bobby's Diner, opens, the heroine, Georgette, is at the reading of her recently deceased husband, Bobby's, will. Also in attendance are her husband's ex-wife, Vanessa, and Vanessa's daughter, Roberta. The meeting proceeds much as everyone expected, until Bobby's attorney shocks the women with the news that Bobby left equal shares of his thriving business to Georgette and Vanessa. The business is Bobby's Diner, and the two women have no choice but to run it together.
The first night the diner reopens is a disaster, with most of the wait staff calling in either sick or drunk, and the situation does not improve much from there. Georgette and Vanessa are angry and suspicious of each other, feelings that run deep and long. After all, Vanessa had been married to Bobby for many years when young and beautiful Georgette appeared at the diner one day and stole his heart. The subsequent divorce and remarriage scandalized the small Arizona town of Sunnydale, and many of the residents have not yet accepted or forgiven Georgette, even 15 years later.
To add to Georgette's woes, there is trouble afoot in the normally quiet backwater town located north of Phoenix. Shifty developer Zach Pinzer, as well as the town's underhanded mayor, Harold Pyle, want to develop the land the diner sits on as part of their idea to make Sunnydale into the new Sedona. When Georgette and Vanessa refuse to cave in to their ridiculous demands, the action accelerates until everything comes to a dramatic head. Beneath this plot line, however, strong threads and themes emerge--with questions about what constitutes family, love, loyalty, and the kinds of choices we make. Because of Bobby's crazy idea to have Georgette and Vanessa run the diner together, Georgette is a different person at novel's end. So is Vanessa, and her daughter Roberta, and the entire town of Sunnydale, for that matter.
As Georgette muses when pondering God and the bible, "...but I didn't write that book. Can you imagine if I had? I think there would be the only one rule if I wrote it. It would go like this: love every living thing." A nice sentiment, and Georgette's path to learning it, is long and interesting.
There were many things to like about this novel, including the Sunnydale setting and the location of the diner itself. I enjoyed traveling along Georgette's character arc as she grew and changed, and I especially liked some of the minor characters, such as the mayor's wife, Helen, and the master gardener, Jose. What bothered me about the novel were the long stretches of narrative exposition, some of which could easily have been made into scenes to heighten the drama. I also felt that at times the author strained a bit to make Georgette a kick ass character and I thought the throughline of her and Vanessa's relationship got a bit wobbly at times.
The whole idea of ebooks is interesting to me. I had a brief and not-so-shining career as an editor of erotic romance ebooks, but that involved mostly reading submissions, which I would print out, and not finished ebooks. This is the first book I've read entirely on the computer. I expected to hate it, but it really wasn't bad--the format of the book (granted, I had an advance copy) was easy on the eyes, with large type. So if you've been resisting the ebook thing because you didn't want to print it out, give it another try, you might be surprised.
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