Wallflower in Bloom

If you read my blog regularly, you know I'm a Claire Cook fan, so I was more than happy to curl up with her latest, Wallflower in Bloom (#237), after the final dish was put away from Thanksgiving dinner.

Deidre Griffin's brother Tag is a celebrity self-help guru, and the center of a family industry which employs his parents and all three of his three sisters.  Deidre is his Personal Assistant, and a genius at managing and marketing him on social media.  The problem is that Tag is so needy, Deidre has no life of her own.  Even her house is a converted sheep shed on his estate which he will not let her buy.  When her on-again, off-again former boyfriend Mitchell drops by to tell Deidre he's marrying his pregnant girlfriend, that's the last straw for her.  She has to get away from everything, but how?  Maybe it's time to take advantage of the social empire she's built for Tag, and accept a place on Dancing With The Stars...

Okay, maybe the part about actually managing to land a spot on Dancing With The Stars was a bit over the top, but the family issues Ms. Cook deals with in this book are very real, and will strike a chord with most readers.  You may struggle all your life for independence from your family, yet in the end, they're the ones whom you turn to for support and when you find it given unconditionally, it's the ultimate freedom, even if there is some name-calling along the way. 

But her books are never done without a welcome sense of humor!  Having grown up in the Boston area, I got an especial kick out of what Deidre thinks after she moves to Los Angeles to train for DWTS: "I wondered if people from L.A. felt like they were taking a foreign-language class when they came to Massachusetts.  Worcester.  Woburn.  Gloucester.  Scituate."  I think Ms. Cook missed a chance to add a little insider humor here when she neglected to add Haverhill to that list, since it's the birthplace of DWTS's unnamed male co-host, Tom Bergeron.  When a new TV anchor person or radio personality began on any of the Boston stations, it did give some of us hours of entertainment to listen to them mangle the local place names.  Wallflower in Bloom is equally entertaining, but provides a little more food for thought.  A great addition to Chick Lit, especially if you enjoy a story whose main focus isn't on the romance.