Book Club: The Library of Second chances

My book club was looking for an easy, summer read. Something that gave us beach-y, summer vibes. I had first heard about The Library of Second of Second Chances by Savannah Carlisle from a podcast I followed and loved the You’ve Got Mail inspired plot in a small Florida beach town, Heron Island.

Beach vibes.

As a short synopsis, a small town girl, Lucy, runs the local bookstore and simultaneously the town’s “free library,” her pet project after trying and failing a year earlier to secure funding that would have kept her public library from closing. At the free library, she encourages readers to leave anonymous notes and book recommendations for the next reader. Her pen name, Island Girl, corresponds regularly with Gatsby’s Ghost, whose taste in books, world view, and struggles seem to align with her own. How fortuitous!

Cue the big bad out of town city developer, Logan, who has fled to Heron Island to redeem his most recent failed city development project. His efforts went belly-up after his main sponsor - and incidentally his fiancé’s father - pulled funding from the project after Logan dumped said fiancee for cheating on him. So, his tortured soul will find peace once he has another successful project under his belt.

My daughter made a beach-inspired flower arrangement!

Now, on to the food!! This book did not disappoint from a food standpoint. As you can imagine there were many references to seafood and comfort foods in general. Bonus points that the MFC was close friends with another small business owner that ran the local cafe on the coveted under-developed waterfront. Shrimp and Grits, Burger and Fries, Miami Vice, Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies, Vodka, Sweet Tea, and Egg Salad, to name a few.

Since select members of my book club aren’t huge fans of seafood - and I’ll admit, this landlubber lacks experience with seafood - we decided to skip to the easy things like Egg Salad Sandwiches (with bacon!), Fries, Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies, Sweet Tea, and Miami Vice (sans alcohol, sadly, because we met during the lunch hour and have adult responsibilities afterwards.)

This was a tasty lunch. Not well photographed, but still tasty.

What we loved:
Erm…this was a struggle for us. Partway through the book - about 20% - we had to have a little DTR. That’s “define the read” in book club language. But, we decided to press on for the sake of literary review!!

For my part, I lost interest quite quickly, so much so that I would read the first line of every paragraph and still felt like it took me ages to finish the book. It was super disappointing because I was really hoping to enjoy it.

There was one or two beautifully descriptive phrases early on that set the mood. It became quickly apparent, however, that such phrases served merely to hook readers before casting them out to sea, where they would float untethered from the mooring of beautiful prose.

I’d be hard-pressed to say that I loved something about this book, because even the settings and characters seemed lackluster. Maybe the inspiration for the Miami Vice? I did particularly enjoy that at book club!

Homemade Miami Vice. 4.5 stars.

What we disliked:
Overall, we were disappointed that there didn’t seem to be a lot of connection with the characters and therefore, no real depth or character growth. There didn’t seem to be much chemistry between the MFC/MMC aside from a physical attraction (and apparently a pair of stellar green eyes that might have started haunting me in my sleep).

We had also hoped for more “vibes” with the setting, but despite being in an idyllic town we didn’t get to explore much of it. There were so many opportunities that could have been explored but…nope.

Ultimately, we decided that we were not the targeted demographic for this book.

The Food in Fiction Book Club rated this a 2.25 stars.

#justkeepreating

Does this sound like a book you might enjoy? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Reating!