The Islanders

Looking for the perfect hammock read?  Meg Mitchell Moore's The Islanders (#843) may be just the book you're looking for.

Set on Block Island, a ferry's ride away from Rhode Island, we meet three strangers for one pivotal summer.  Anthony is a writer with a scandal in his past.  Block Island is the perfect place to hide out in a friend's borrowed cottage.  Lu, in the summer rental cottage next door, is a stay-at-home mom with two boys and a doctor husband commuting to the mainland to complete his residency.  She also has a big secret of her own. Trying to keep her secret from her husband and her prying mother-in-law with her own key to the cottage is a constant struggle for Lu.  Joy and her thirteen year old daughter Maggie are the only year round island residents in the mix.  Joy owns and operates the island's only whoopie pie café.  Just when she's beginning to get her head above water financially, a roving food truck muscles in on her turf during peak tourist season.  Not only is the food truck cutting into her bottom line, but the sixteen year old son of the owners is a magnet for Maggie.

Because so much of the novel is about food, how can I resist using the metaphor of an onion as the layers of secrets each of the characters are keeping are slowly peeled away.  Anthony, Lu and Joy develop relationships with each other, and confide some secrets, but not others.  Everything is seemingly going so well for everyone in the middle of the book that you know that it just can't last...

I thoroughly enjoyed this seaside romance, maybe because so many of the places Ms. Moore mentions here are so familiar, even though I've never been to Block Island myself.  But Point Judith?  Many fond memories!  Boston University?  Proud alum.  RL Julia in Madison, Connecticut?  My sister-in-law introduced me to this outstanding bookstore several years ago.  You get the drift.

My one bone to pick with this book also concerns food, though.  According to the author, the idea of a whoopie pie café is based on the real life success of Chococoa Baking Company and Café in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  Why weren't they in business before I moved south?  In my prepublication copy of The Islanders, there is a page left intentionally blank for a whoopie pie recipe.  Hopefully it will be published in the copy you read.  It's a good thing I have a copy of America's Test Kitchen The Perfect Cookie cookbook with recipes (Updated with no Crisco or trans fats in sight!) for both the traditional chocolate whoopie pie, and the fantastic pumpkin mini whoopie pies with cream cheese filling.  Yum!  Yes, of course I had to bake them after reading about Joy Bombs!  However, one of the characters writes a food blog DinnerByDad  (It's fictional; I checked online.) and talks about developing amazing recipes.  Where are the recipes from that food blog which had me drooling while I was reading??!!  A few of those would have been a brilliant addition to a book that makes you feel like you've spent the summer on Block Island along with the rest of these colorful characters.

Enjoy!  What's not to like?