Books & Beans

Welcome!

We will meet at The Parfait Pastry Shop, downtown St. Augustine.
142 King St.
St. Augustine, FL 32084
Phone: (904) 217-3094 (Arlene & Melanie)
Parfait Pastry Shop | Home

NOTE: There are six parking spaces in the front of the building and on the side, but I spoke with the owner, Arlene, and she said she will allow us to park in employee parking behind the building. There is also a large lot at the St. Augustine Winery, a block away (catty-corner to Carmelo's).
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Time for a lighter read. Last month we covered Vietnam, the Holocaust, and a terrorist attack on Rome... heavy stuff.

I saw this author last year on Hoda & Jenna and just really loved her interview (so much that I purchased her novel while I was watching the interview). This is a quirky read (and if you read the reviews, just know I thought "quirky" before I read any reviews - but the fact that so many of us find the book "quirky" makes it an apt description). <3 I enjoyed every minute of this book. I didn't listen to it; I read it with my eyeballs this time. Y'all who did listen have to let me know how you liked the narrator.

I think I loved that while this book is filled with ghosts (and it is - but never in a scary way), it's not about a haunting. It's more of a love story to re-discovering and connecting to the past. When I finished the book, I felt it was a satisfying ending, kind of like how you feel with homemade apple pie at the end of a meal. Sometimes that is difficult to say about a book, especially one as "quirky" (and it is quirky- have I said that? You'll get what I'm saying once you read it) as this one. <3 I hope you enjoy it as I did.

FROM THE BACK COVER:
A lost young woman returns to small-town New Hampshire under the strangest of circumstances in this one-of-a-kind novel of life, death, and whatever comes after. From the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake.

It was a source of entertainment at Maple Street Cemetery. Both funny and sad, the kind of story we like best.

Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she’s lost her way. A medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.

Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad’s illness, her mom’s judgment, and her younger brother’s recent stint in rehab, but she’s unprepared to find that her former best friend from high school is missing, with no one bothering to look for her. The police say they don’t spend much time looking for drug addicts. Emma’s dad is the only one convinced the young woman might still be alive, and Emma is hopeful he could be right. Someone should look for her, at least. Emma isn’t really trying to be a hero, but somehow, she and her father bring about just the kind of miracle the town needs.

Set against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a tragicomic novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Book Riot Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize.