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On Turpentine Lane - Book Review

The 16th book I read for 24 books in 2017 was called On Turpentine Lane.


On Turpentine Lane by Elinor Lipman
Hardcover: 320 Pages   Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (February 14, 2017)

Ok, confession time... When I pick my books, most of the time I find a book I've read and loved on Amazon. Then when a list of books similar to the one I liked pop up, I find ones with interesting covers and read their little blurb that the book is about. If I'm still intrigued I throw it in the cart. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this... This was exactly how I found this book.

Faith Frankel is engaged and somewhat happy in her job, writing thank you letters for her alma mater. Her fiancé decides to take a crowdfunded cross country walk and she gets fed up with the inability to get in touch although he's able to post photos of him with other women to social media, so she breaks off their engagement. (I'm not so sure they were actually engaged.  He seemed to be a bit of a commitment-phobe anyway.)

She bought a house she loved upon first sight, but felt slightly differently about after she learned of a couple mysteries that may have occurred there.

Faith is very close to her brother Joel and often calls him to ask about his love life and for him to do favors. He's often the first to hear about anything happening in Faith's life and often helps her out with projects around the house.  Her mother and father are married and not separated but are living separately as her father pretty much lives in his art studio where he is now painting faux Chegalls.

When her friend and officemate, Nick, moves in as a housemate/ghostbuster, everything changes and the unfortunate house at 10 Turpentine Lane may not be so unlucky after all.

I really enjoyed this book. It kept me on my toes. To be honest, I read the little blurb but didn't remember what it was about. A friend asked me what I was reading about a chapter in and I literally told him "A book about a girl who buys a house." I loved that it felt like a TV show or movie in that you got to see several characters and so much happened around these characters, even if we only saw it all from Faith's point of view.

I finished this book last night, so excited by this author that at 1:30 this morning I found myself on Amazon ordering more books by her.



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