The Bake-Off

Kendrick (Second Time Around) whips up a snappy tale of two estranged sisters forced to make amends. Drop-dead gorgeous Type-A brainiac Linnie Bialek is wasting her potential working as a dealer at a Las Vegas casino. Her cute sister, Amy, once the life of the party, is now a soccer mom stuck in suburban Connecticut; though content, she sometimes longs for the fun of the past. When the sisters' sage grammy's expensive antique brooch is stolen from Linnie's apartment and pawned, and Linnie loses the high-stakes poker game that was her only hope of getting it back, grammy convinces her to enter a national baking contest with a big cash prize. The catch: she has to partner with her sister. The weeklong trip, of course, shows Linnie and Amy that family is more important than petty differences. While readers will see the surprise ending coming for miles, and the rush to wrap things up is awkward, Kendrick's yin and yang characters make a classic tale of sibling rivalry enjoyable and invigorating. (May)