Lucky

I am one lucky gal.  I won another GoodReads FirstReads book.  There’s nothing like opening your email to see that little gem first thing in the morning.  It makes the annoyance of the electronic bills go away instantly!

After You by Julie Buxbaum

The complexities of a friendship. The unexplored doubts of a marriage. And the redemptive power of literature…Julie Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love, delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each other—and ourselves.
It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie Lerner’s best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her young daughter. And, as best friends do, Ellie dropped everything—her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs—to travel to London and pick up the pieces of Lucy’s life. While Lucy’s husband, Greg, copes with his grief by retreating into himself, eight-year-old Sophie has simply stopped speaking.

Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel’s winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do Lucy’s secrets—some big, some small—secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels back the layers of her friend’s life, she’s forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she’d hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie’s carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life—and those around her— forever. A novel that will resonate in the heart of anyone who’s had a best friend, a love lost, or a past full of regrets, After You proves once again the unique and compelling talent of Julie Buxbaum.

It arrived in the mail almost immediately and rather than the hardback version I thought I’d get, I wound up with this:

It’s a real, live, manuscript.  Complete with the warning “ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOFS – Please do not quote for publication without checking against the finished book.”  And publishing details, and a front page with the tentative cover image.  There is a random house design in blue on the cover.

I think I just died and went to bibliophile heaven.

Since I’m so fortunate, I am going to start a lending library of sorts.  Any books I win that you all would like to read, I’m happy to share.  Just post a comment or drop me a line.

So far, besides After You, I have:

Love in Condition Yellow — Sophia Raday

The Last Bridge: A Novel — Teri Coyne

Happy reading, everyone!