I'm Looking for a Good Book by Alison McCorkle

We often hear comments from our patrons, stating that they’re looking for a good book. This can be quite a dilemma!  The staff member’s idea of what a good book is and the patron’s idea of what a good book is can be quite different indeed.

What I’ve done for this blog is just do random searches using the words spring, garden, wedding etc. and then focused my attention on a few of the titles that I felt were interesting, attractive or intriguing to me. This is what I chose from my search:

The Forbidden Garden by Ellen Herrick

At the nursery she runs with her sisters on the New England coast, Sorrel Sparrow has honed her rare gift for nurturing plants and flowers. Now that reputation, and a stroke of good timing, lands Sorrel an unexpected opportunity: reviving a long-dormant Shakespearean garden on an English country estate. (Excerpted from www.goodreads.com)

In the Shadow Garden by Liz Parker

“There’s something magical about Yarrow, Kentucky. The three empathic witches of the Haywood family are known for their shadow garden – from strawberries that taste like chocolate to cherry tomatoes imbued with the flavours of basil and oregano. Their magic can cure any heartache, and the fruits of their garden bring a special quality to the local bourbon distillery. On one day every year, a shot of Bonner bourbon will make your worst memory disappear. But the Haywoods will never forget the Bonners’ bitter betrayal. Twenty years ago, the town gave up more than one memory; they forgot an entire summer. One person died. One person disappeared and no one has any recollection of either. As events from that fateful summer start to come to light, there must be a reckoning between the rival Haywood and Bonner families. But untangling the deep roots of this town’s terrible secrets will expose more than they could ever anticipate about love, treachery, and the true nature of their power.” (provided by publisher)

Four Aunties and a Wedding – Jesse Q. Sutanto

Ma and the aunts find the perfect wedding vendors for Meddy Chan’s upcoming wedding: a Chinese-Indonesian family-run company just like theirs. Meddy is horrified when she overhears the wedding photographer, Staphanie, talking about taking out a target. Staphanie and her family are The Family – actual mafia, and they’re using Meddy’s wedding as a chance to conduct shady business. Her aunties and mother won’t let Meddy’s wedding ceremony become a murder scene and will do whatever it takes to save her special day, even if it means taking on the mafia. (Excerpted from bibliographic record)

The Spring Girls: a Modern Re-Telling of Little Women – Anna Todd

The Spring Girls – Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy – are a force of nature on the New Orleans military base where they live. As different as they are, with their father on tour in Iraq and their mother hiding something, their fears are very much the same. Struggling to build lives they can be proud of and that will lift them out of their humble station in life, one year will determine all that their futures can become. With plenty of sass, romance and drama The Spring Girls revisits Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women, and brings its themes of love, war, class, adolescence, and family into the language of the twenty-first century. (www.goodreads.com)

An Island Wedding – Jenny Colgan

A delightful summer novel that will sweep you away to the remote Scottish island of Mure, where two very different weddings are about to take place… On the little Scottish island of Mure – halfway between Scotland and Norway – Flora Mackenzie and fiancé Joel are planning the smallest of sweetheart weddings, a high summer celebration surrounded only by those very dearest to them. Not everyone on the island is happy about being excluded, though. The temperature rises even further when beautiful Olivia MacDonald –who left Mure ten years ago for bigger and brighter things – returns with a wedding planner in tow. Her fiancé has oodles of family money, and Olivia is determined to throw the biggest, most extravagant, most Instagrammable wedding possible. And she wants to do it at Flora’s carefully planned micro-wedding. As the summer solstice approaches, can Flora handle everyone else’s Happy Ever Afters –and still get her own? (cPublisher’s description)

Sometimes just doing a search by subject can offer you a variety of book choices to investigate further.  This then allows you to choose something that you feel may very well be a book that you will enjoy. You could also choose to do a search by title, series, or author if you would prefer.  We are always happy to help our patrons, but “a GOOD book” really comes down to personal opinion.