“The first thought I had after I died was: How will my dog cope with this?
The second thought: I hope we can still go with open casket.
Third thought: I have nothing to wear to my funeral.
Fourth: I’ll never meet Daniel Radcliffe now.
Fifth: Did Bobby just break up with me?”
Nora Stuart has just had a pretty successful night at work when she steps off a curb and is hit by the Beantown Bug Killers van. When she wakes in her own hospital’s emergency room she hears her boyfriend hitting on another woman. Not a great way to come back from the dead. So she does the only thing she can think of. She takes her dog Boomer and retreats back home to her mother’s house on the island of Scupper off the coast of Maine. Not that her mother is any great shakes at offering comfort, but Nora just needs a break while she figures out just what she’s doing with her life. Her job was going great in Boston, but her relationship, not so much (clearly) and Boston has lost a lot of its allure in the last few months. Back in her hometown she can regroup – even if some of the residents have never forgiven her for winning the scholarship to college that was meant to go to the town’s golden boy. While she recuperates she attempts to get closer to her mother and to Poe, her teenaged niece who has just landed on their doorstep.
Higgins never fails to draw her readers in with wit, warmth and humor. Her characters are well-drawn and instantly relatable and she always manages to make me cry just a little bit (and laugh a lot). And her record holds with Now that You Mention It. This is her latest, but she has a nice backlist if you want to dive in somewhere else. I recommend any and all of her titles.