Summer On Blossom Street.

 

                                                             TBR Challenge.
Title: Summer on Blossom Street.  (Blossom St. #6)
Author: Debbie Macomber
Published: Harlequin: Mira
First published: 2009. This edition 2011.

Summary.
This book continues the lives and stories of many of the Blossom Street characters from previous books.  In my opinion this book is best read after the  others have been read.  However it could be read as a one off if one wished. 

Lydia, the owner of the wool shop decides to start a group - Knit to Quit.  Joining it is Alix who is trying to overcome her smoking addiction, she wants to start a family with Jordan but firstly she needs to beat her addiction. There are two new characters - Phoebe who is getting over a relationship gone wrong, and Hutch who is taking up knitting on the advice of his Doctor as knitting is a way to de stress! He is the owner of a chocolate factory and is being sued by a woman because the chocolates made her fat!

Anne Marie (book shop owner) and her adopted daughter Ellen also feature in this book, Ellen has as one of her twenty wishes wanted to get to know her unknown father.  There is a number of twists and turns to this and it makes for an interesting addition to the book.

Lydia and her family also feature strongly in this book.  Lydia and Brad are wanting to adopt a baby.  Instead they are asked to foster for awhile a twelve year old girl - Casey.  There son Cody is none too pleased with this and so there is tension in the household.

My thoughts.
I enjoyed this Summer on Blossom Street, I have liked all the Blossom Street books so far and was nudged into reading the remainder of the series when a new one was published this year.  I have them all lined up on the shelf ready to go!  I have listened to the audio of the previous ones, however this one received so many poor narrator reviews I decided to buy the actual paperback.

It is a story that explores such issues as stress, addiction, infidelity, adoption, foster care and ageing.  These issues are all set in the context of family, friends and community.  The characters face down challenges that are thrown at them and they make decisions and grow - or not, as the case may be.

One of the issues - that of foster care touched by heart.  Into Lydia's family comes Casey, well used to the foster care system - being passed on from one family to the next, never belonging anywhere.  It reminded me of a superb book I read earlier in the year, One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, ( a Middle Grade book.)  This book explored in depth the experience that Casey has in Summer on Blossom Street. Each book ends differently, yet both explore the same depth of relationships in family and the response to an outsider entering over the threshold.

I liked the quotes at the beginning of some chapters, most by actual people with urls given to reach their websites.  Obviously Debbie Macomber loves knitting.  I liked the first quote in the book because it referred to New Zealand yarn!  ( I live in New Zealand).  I have been able to knit since I was a child and still do, so this book hasn't set me off on a big "I want to learn to knit," splurge as a quilting book might, however it did awaken old interests.  I also liked that there is a pattern given for  a scarf at the beginning of the book.

To finish - a cosy read, something to take my mind off the daily challenges of my own life!

I read this book as part of Wendy's TBR challenge - this month's challenge was to read a book by an author that you have more than one book of theirs in your TBR pile.