Story for the Week
The end of March means the change of seasons from winter to spring. It also means a change in my favorite reading spot. Anywhere can be a good reading spot. In fact, I would argue that there’s no such thing as a bad reading spot. I read in the car when I’m waiting for something, in line at the grocery store, at the doctor’s office. Like most avid readers, I read in bed a lot. I read while I eat, during television commercials. There really isn’t anywhere that I won’t read.
But the weather warm-up means I can read outside, and while I really dislike being in the sun where I burn to a crisp in minutes, I love reading outside in the shade. And spring is officially here based on the calendar, which means warmer weather is coming. Don’t get me wrong. We probably still have at least one more “fake spring” in the Midwest—several days where it warms up into the upper 50s or low 60s before it drops back down into the 30s again. But as the warmup cycle begins, so begins the act of pulling the patio furniture out of the garage and moving it into the gazebo in the yard.
I had some friends install the gazebo in the summer of 2021. I wanted a comfortable place to sit outside with a lot of shade. With the purchase of new outdoor furniture, I spent a lot of time outside reading, napping, sometimes just staring off into the sky talking to my husband Dennis who had passed away the previous fall. I read a lot of books, drank a lot of wine, and wrote a lot of blog posts in that gazebo.
In the fall of 2022, a bad storm pulled it out of the ground, so the next summer, I had a new one installed. This time, I hired a company to install it, complete with a concrete base that the posts were set into. I wasn’t taking any chances that it would pull out of the ground again. Sadly, despite the fact that it was advertised as an all-season gazebo and had lasted through winter before, we had some heavy snow in the winter of 2023/2024, and the top caved in.
I haven’t gotten around to repairing it yet, so that’s on the agenda for this year. We’re planning to remove the cover and the metal supports, and this time I’m just going to replace it with a pergola canopy that will be easy to remove in the winter but provide the shade that I want the rest of the year. Until then, I’ll just have to find a shady spot outside because the best place to consume a good beach read is outside…even if you can’t make it to the beach.
The beaches of Michigan, and the beach reads that went along with them, were a highlight of the book reviewed below. The book is a pass for me, but the idea of a good beach read is a must-have.
Book Review
⭐⭐
2 Stars for The Page Turner by Viola Shipman
336 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing | Graydon House
Publication Date: April 8, 2025
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing | Graydon House.
Publisher’s Description
Emma Page grew up the black sheep in a bookish household, raised to believe that fine literature is the only worthy type of fiction. Her parents, self-proclaimed “serious” authors who run their own vanity press, The Mighty Pages, mingle in highbrow social circles that look down on anything too popular or mainstream, while her sister, Jess, is a powerful social media influencer whose stylish reviews can make or break a novel.
Hiding her own romance manuscript from her disapproving parents, Emma finds inspiration at the family cottage among the “fluff” they despise: the juicy summer romances that belonged to her late grandmother. But a chance discovery unearthed from her Gigi’s belongings reveals a secret that has the power to ruin her parents’ business and destroy their reputation in the industry—a secret that has already fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous publishing insider with a grudge to settle. Now Emma must decide—as much as she’s dreamed of the day when her parents are forced to confront their own egos, can she really just sit back and watch The Mighty Pages be exposed and their legacy destroyed?
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Main Characters:
- Emma Page – recent college graduate with a major in English, inherited her love of reading from her grandmother GiGi, has her sights set on being a writer and wrote her first novel in college, enjoys more popular fiction versus the “pretentious” literary fiction her parents publish
- Jess Page – Emma’s older sister, one of the original BookTokers, works as the social media influencer for their parents publishing house, her influence can make or break a new release
- Phillip and Piper Page – Jess and Emma’s parents, authors who own and run the publishing house The Mighty Pages, refuse to publish “popular” fiction and think GiGi and Emma’s love of romance novels is a waste of time, they discourage Emma from reading GiGi’s favorite author
- Marcus Flare – considered the world’s most preeminent romance novelist, Emma is disgusted by him and his writing and sees him as a sexist and misogynist
- Vivian Vandeventer – goes by VV, head of her own literary agency VV Lit, rivals of Phillip and Piper
- GiGi Page – recently passed away, Phillip’s mother, left the family her home in Michigan where Emma and Jess always spent their summers
I really wanted to love this book. It has everything a book nerd would want—people reading all the time, people who love to write, beaches, sunshine, romance novels, beach reads, and a peek behind the curtain of the world of professional publishing. What more could a book girlie want?
Shortly after Emma graduates from the University of Michigan, her parents host a book launch for Phillip’s latest novel at GiGi’s home in Michigan. All of their literary elite friends and colleagues are in attendance, including Marcus Flare, who Emma knows but doesn’t like at all. At the event, Emma picks up on some hints that her parents have something going on with Marcus that makes her suspicious, but she has no idea what it is.
Phillip, Piper, and Jess fully expect Emma to work with them at the publishing house, but Emma is determined to be a writer. When she discovers a plan to destroy her parents’ business, she has to choose between following her own dream or trying to take down the person who wants to take down her family.
The plot itself intrigued me, but the story fell down pretty quickly. Emma claims that her parents’ tastes are pretentious, but she acts exactly the way she claims to dislike. Phillip, Piper, and Jess look down on both Emma and GiGi’s tastes in reading material. They dismiss Emma’s desire to write, despite the fact that Phillip himself is an author and they have never actually read anything she’s written to know whether she has talent. Marcus Flare is comically evil, practically a caricature villain. All he needs is Snidely Whiplash’s handlebar mustache. The only character I really liked was VV—a strong, confident businesswoman who oozes personality.
There’s a secret that Emma and Jess discover in GiGi’s belongings almost 70% of the way through the book that I saw coming less than 20% in. For someone who was so close to her grandmother, Emma is awfully out of touch with her grandmother’s life. At one point, we learn that no one was ever allowed in GiGi’s home office, but when Emma is left alone in the house for two weeks, she doesn’t sneak into the office despite indicating that she had always been curious. Seriously, that’s the first thing I would have done with two weeks to myself. And Phillip and Piper tell Emma that they know she has written a book because they talk to her friends, but they keep discouraging her from being a writer. It just doesn’t make sense.
To top it all off, Emma went on and on about the romances that GiGi loved. Even the publisher’s description says Emma’s manuscript is a romance, but based on how it’s described in the book, it’s not a romance at all. “An ode to sisterhood, family, first love and first loss, a tribute to all the ways family shatters us and yet protects us.” That’s not romance.
The wrap-up at the end provided some nice closure, but it was a struggle to get there. I appreciated the author’s note at the end a lot more than I appreciated the book itself. I was so excited to read this one, and I left so disappointed. It was a miss for me.
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