By the Time You Read This

Brit counselor Jaye offers a self-help manual dressed up as fiction in her debut. Lois's father, Kevin, died when she was five. Seven years later, she receives a book from Auntie Philomena on the day her mother remarries. The book, The Manual , is by her father and is chock-full of his advice for Lois, to be read one chapter per year, on her birthday. A list of seven rules includes a warning for Lois to not skip ahead, and she takes her dad's advice to heart, savoring the entries, the vast majority of which consist largely of standard self-help fare ( “Tomorrow's not guaranteed, so live today”; “allow yourself the chance to really feel”), while enduring the vicissitudes of life. It's decent if bland in its earnestness, and will likely find a place on more than a few bookshelves between Kübler-Ross and The Last Lecture . (Aug.)