After moving often with her widowed, wedding planner mother Stella Havisham ("as glamorous as a queen"), Paratore's (How Prudence Proovit Proved the Truth About Fairy Tales)
feisty young narrator Willa finally feels at home in the Cape Cod town of Bramble. The seventh grader can now spend time with her Nana, who owns a candy store in town; finds a kindred spirit in Mr. Tweed, a bookseller who supplies this voracious reader with books galore; and feels certain that classmate Tina will become her best friend. And she hopes that Bramble will be the place where she will finally find a father, a prospect that becomes brighter when Sam, a handsome widower and poet, moves in next door. Stella has never let herself get too close to any man since Willa's father (in one of the novel's numerous theatrical twists) died in a hot-air balloon crash the day after their wedding, yet the matchmaking girl thinks Sam is the one whose amour
may just crack her mother's armor. The author laces her appealing tale with literary allusions (this
Ms. Havisham has "great expectations" for her daughter) and with quotes from books Willa reads, and plays up the romance blatantly, with happy endings galore. A sweet little morsel. Ages 8-13. (Feb
.)
