The Honk and Holler Opening Soon

By Billie Letts

The Honk and Holler is a cafe run by Vietnam vet, Caney Paxton. Crippled in the war, Caney hasn't left the cafe since he opened it twelve years ago. He has PTSD and copes with it by staying inside. He runs the cafe and lives in a small apartment in the back of the cafe.
Then Vena walks into his cafe one day, cradling a small, ill dog in her arms. She needs a job and talks Caney into letting her work as a carhop, promising him she will work for tips only. Of course, it isn't long until Vena has moved in with Caney and is sharing his bed. And two lonely souls discover that they still have a lot of loving and living to do.

I did enjoy this story a lot. I liked the characters you're supposed to like and hated the one character you're supposed to hate. I enjoyed seeing this bunch of losers turn their lives around and come together to find some happiness.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

Failure to Zigzag

By Jane Vandenburgh

Charlotte never knew her father. He died before she was born. She never really knew much about him either. Her father's parents were not part of her life. And her mother was schizophrenic and frequently hospitalized and not a reliable source of information.
So Charlotte lived with her mother's parents mostly. At one point her mother remarried and Charlotte came to live with the mother and her husband. But it didn't last. The marriage ended and the mother went back into the hospital.
The grandparents were probably not the best choice for raising a child. At least under their care Charlotte had all her physical needs met. She was well groomed, decently clothed, had regular meals and attended school. When with her mother, though, she lived in filth and squalor, neglected and ignored by a mother too drunk or too crazy to see that her child needed her care and attention.
When Charlotte was about sixteen, the grandparents decided they were fed up with taking care of her and of her mentally ill mother. They bought the mother a travel trailer and sent Charlotte off to live with the mother. But the mother was the same drunken, demented person she always was. On the other hand, Charlotte was now old enough to not need to be taken care of like a little child. And this time with her mother built a closeness the led to the truth being revealed about the father's death.

The mother in this story really is annoying, a very disagreeable character. Drunk, neglectful, crazy: who needs that kind of drama in their life? Whether in reality or in a novel? She just made me so tired. The whole story is the struggle of the child trying to cope with her mother and her grandparents and her trying to unravel the truth of her father's demise. It was an okay read, I guess.

The Living Is Easy

By Dorothy West

Cleo was a wild child, proud and devious, leader of the pack consisting of herself and her three sisters. Born into a poor southern family, teenage Cleo yearns for a better life and heads off to Boston where she meets the man she will marry, Bart.
Bart is a successful businessman, owner of a fruit wholesale business, specializing in bananas. When Cleo looks at Bart all she can see is dollar signs. Bart has what Cleo wants: money. So even though he is much older than she is, even though she doesn't really care for him, she still marries him. 
But Cleo is missing her sisters. She cons Bart into renting a large home and then she cons her sisters into leaving their homes and spouses and coming to Boston for a visit. But what she really wants is for the sisters and their children to stay. Her lies convince one sister Lily that her husband Victor is a dangerous and vicious drunk. Her lies convince her other sister Serena that her husband Robert is shiftless and unreliable. And her sister Charity's husband Ben has a wandering eye, and without his wife nearby to keep him in line, he takes up with another woman. So Cleo neatly wreaks all three of her sisters' marriages and keeps them by her side in Boston.
But a life built on lies and tricks and deviousness does not prosper. Cleo's extravagance catches up with all of them as Bart's business starts to decline due to new competition. Cleo's eyes are finally opened to her destructiveness as her marriage fails and her sisters leave to make their own way in the world.

It's hard to like a story where the main character is as unappealing as Cleo Judson. I disliked her from the very beginning. She is sneaky, grasping, conceited and blind to her own faults. She has very few redeeming qualities. Even her love of her sisters is self-serving as she destroys their marriages without a qualm.
Reading about Cleo made me wonder if the author actually knew someone like Cleo in reality. Otherwise, how could she invent such a creature?
There is an afterword by Adelaide Cromwell in which she explains that several of the characters were based on real Bostonians. If Cleo was based on a real person, I pity the people who had her in their lives!

Review by Susan Coventry / Reading World.

The Current Climate

By Bruce Jay Friedman

Harry Towns, screenwriter. Fairly successful, living in a rural town with his wife and young daughter, approaching old age, Harry still feels the pressure of paying the bills as he clings to his successes of the past.
In such a mood, he heads off to New York City to hang with questionable old friends and indulge in questionable practices that lead to big city antics a man his age ought to have outgrown.

This first half of the book was certainly the most interesting as Harry indulges himself with his big city sins. But then the story veers off into his youth and his first foray into becoming a writer and young Harry was just not as interesting to me as old Harry.

Review from Kirkus.

Never After

By Rebecca Lickiss

The fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, retold. Only this time, instead of a sleeping princess, it's three princes.
Prince Athelstan is looking for a bride. Due to unknown circumstances, eligible princesses are in short supply. So when he finds out about Sleeping Beauty, he sets off to rescue her and find himself a bride. He is puzzled and disappointed to discover the promised princess is instead three sleeping princes. But he does find a sleeping beauty he quite fancies, one of the ladies of the court. Like everyone is the castle, she is fast asleep. Looks like the Prince is going to have to find a princess to awaken the sleeping princes with a kiss. And he knows just the girl, his willful cousin, Princess Vevila.  She is not fond of court life and longs for adventure. He also invites along three wizards to do magic battle with the witch that put the princes to sleep and who is adamantly opposed  to them being awakened.
So begins the quest to awaken the princes and find a bride for Athelstan. In the process, Rumplestiltskin will play an important part. Cinderella, aka Amelanchier, and her evil stepmom and two ugly stepsisters will stick their noses into the business and the princess of the Princess and the Pea fame also shows up.

I kept waiting for Snow White to show up and join the party. But she never did. We do get a frog prince who gets kissed towards the end of the story. Anyway, this is supposed to be a humorous take on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale but it was only mildly amusing and mostly boring.