New York Times
and USA Today Bestselling author Mary
McNear returns to her beloved Butternut Lake in a story where the complicated
bonds of sisterhood are tested, long kept secrets are revealed, and love is
discovered... all during one unforgettable summer at the lake.
Win and Poppy are two sisters who couldn’t be more different. Win is organized,
responsible, and plans her life with care. Poppy is impulsive and undependable,
leaving others to pick up the pieces of her life. But despite their
differences, they share memories of the idyllic childhood summers they spent
together on the shores of Butternut Lake. Now, thirteen years later, Win,
recovering from a personal tragedy, has taken refuge on Butternut Lake,
settling into a predictable and quiet life.
Then one night, Poppy unexpectedly shows up on her
sister’s doorstep with her suitcases, an aging cat named Sasquatch, and a
mysterious man in tow. Although Win loves her beautiful sister, she wasn’t
expecting her to move in for the summer. At first, they relive the joys of
Butternut Lake. But their blissful nostalgia soon gives way to conflict, and
painful memories and buried secrets threaten to tear the sisters apart. As the
waning days of summer get shorter, past secrets are revealed, new love is
found, and the ties between the sisters are tested like never before… all on
the serene shores of Butternut Lake.
My Thoughts…
Pop and Win are as close as sisters can be. They love, support, and protect each
other. Until their lives take different
paths and they are pulled apart. Pop
comes to live with Win, uninvited and as a surprise. Their lives intertwine again and their
relationship is rebuilt. I love the
relationship between these sisters. I
have a sister and she is my best friend.
I can relate to the need to come home to her when things get rough and
you need to escape. I can only hope she
would be as accepting and welcoming as Win is to Pop.
The love story part of the book is great. It is not the main attraction of the book
but it is an important part of the story.
Both sisters have their own relationships happening, yet they are
together in their worries and caution while developing these
relationships. I enjoyed how they
could talk to their men and the respect that was showed throughout the struggles. Mary McNear did an amazing job developing
the relationship and taking things at an easy pace.
I felt like the book started a little slow but it picked
up pace about 1/3 of the way through the book. At that point I could not put the book down
and was anxious to find out what would happen and how the sisters would
continue to rebuild their friendship and how the other relationships would play
out.
Where to buy THE SPACE BETWEEN SISTERS
About MARY MCNEAR
New York Times and USA
Today bestselling author Mary McNear is a writer living in San Francisco with
her husband, two teenage children, and a high-strung, miniscule white dog named
Macaroon. She writes her novels in a local donut shop where she sips Diet
Pepsi, observes the hubbub of neighborhood life and tries to resist the
constant temptation of freshly-made donuts. She bases her novels on a lifetime
of summers spent in a small town on a lake in the Northern Midwest.
From
THE
SPACE BETWEEN SISTERS by Mary McNear. Copyright © 2016 by Mary McNear.
Published on June 14, 2016 by William Morrow Paperbacks, an imprint of
HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpted by permission.
“Look, there’s a driveway,” Poppy said. “And there’s a cabin at
the end of it, too. You can see its lights through the trees.”
“All right,” Everett said. “But if my car breaks down, I’m not knocking on that door. I’ve seen that movie, too. We spend the night there, and when we wake up in the morning, we discover that our kidneys have been harvested.”
“Ugh,” Poppy said, wincing. “I had no idea you were so dark, Everett.”
“No?” he said, with a trace of a smile. “It’s amazing how much you can learn about someone on a two-hundred-and-forty-mile drive.”
“That’s true,” Poppy mused. “So, what have you learned about me?” she asked. She wasn’t being flirtatious. She was just curious.
“I’ve learned . . .” He looked over at her, speculatively. “I’ve learned that you think corn nuts are revolting.”
“That’s because they are revolting.”
“Corn nuts,” Everett said,
concentrating on another
turn, “are the ultimate road trip food.”
“Not even close,” Poppy said. “Because that would obviously be Red Vines.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Everett said. “I mean, they have, like, zero nutritional value, unless you count whatever’s in the red dye, and—”
“Oh, my God, look,” Poppy said, excitedly, of the driveway they were passing. Beside it a large sign with a wintery pinecone painted on it spelled out white pines.
“What’s that?” Everett asked.
“It’s a resort, and it means that we are now exactly
three miles away from my grandparents’ cabin. I mean, my sister’s cabin,” she amended, feeling that familiar jab of resentment she felt whenever she was reminded of the fact that this beloved piece of family real estate had been passed down to Win, and only Win, three years ago. This resentment
was part of the reason that Poppy had avoided coming to Butternut
Lake since Win had moved here year-round a couple of years ago. But if there was any comfort to be
found in Win
being the one to own the cabin, it was in knowing that she would never sell it; it meant as much to her
as it
did to Poppy.
Poppy and Win had spent all of their childhood summers here until Poppy was sixteen and Win was fifteen (they were thirteen
months apart), and Poppy, who was just shy of thirty, could still remember every detail of the cabin. It stood on a small bluff, just above Butternut Lake, and its dark brown clapboard exterior was brightened by cheerful window boxes that overflowed with geraniums. And the homey touches continued inside: colorful rag rugs, knotted pine furniture, red-checked slipcovers on sofas and chairs. The living room, everyone’s favorite room, was as comfortable as an old shoe, with its fieldstone fireplace, and its old record player and collection of albums (some of which dated back to the 1950s). In
one corner, there was a slightly wobbly card table for playing gin rummy, and on the shelf next to the table, a collection of hand-painted duck decoys. Mounted on the wall
above the mantelpiece was the prized three-foot walleyed pike that had not gotten away from their grandfather. The living room windows looked out on a flagstone patio, their grandmother’s begonia garden, and a slope of mossy lawn leading
down to the lake. And the kitchen . . . Poppy remembered it as though it existed in a perpetual summer morning: the lemon yellow cup- boards, the row of shiny copper pans hanging on the wall, and the turquoise gas stove, a monument to 1950s chic.
“Do you think you should give your sister a call now?” Everett asked, interrupting her reverie.
“Why?”
“To tell her that we’re almost there.”
“Oh,” Poppy said, momentarily at a loss. And then she tossed her long blond hair. “No. I’m not going to tell her,” she said. “I thought we’d surprise her.”
Everett stole a quick look at her. “But… she knows we’re coming, right?”
“Not exactly,” Poppy said, feeling a first twinge of nervousness.
Everett was quiet. Then he asked, “Does your sister like surprises?”
“Not really,” Poppy said, and there it was again, that nervous- ness. She tamped it down, firmly, and said, “But what are sisters for if they can’t just . .
. drop in on each other?”
“‘Drop in’?” Everett said, after another pause. “It looks like you’ve got a lot of your stuff with you, though, Poppy. Isn’t it more like, ‘move in’?”
Poppy ignored this question. Harder to ignore were her suitcases, wedged in the trunk of Everett’s car, or her boxes, stacked on the backseat beside Sasquatch’s pet carrier. And it wasn’t just a lot of her stuff, as Everett had pointed out. It was all of her stuff. Though, truth be told, that wasn’t saying much. It had taken her less than an hour to pack everything up. Traveling light was a recurring theme with Poppy, and a necessary one, too, since her peripatetic lifestyle was the norm.
“Sisters don’t have to call ahead. They’re there for each other,” Poppy said now, though she was annoyed by the defensiveness she heard in her own voice.
“But do you think your sister—Win—will be home right now? It’s ten
o’clock on
a Saturday
night.”
“Oh, she’ll be home. If I know her, she’s probably . . . alphabetizing her spice rack,” Poppy said, “or color coding
her sock drawer.” As soon as she said this, though, she felt disloyal.
“Actually, she’s a sweetheart,” she said, turning to Everett. “And I don’t blame her, at all, for being a little . . . neurotic or controlling, or whatever she is. I told you about what happened
to her, didn’t I?” And Poppy pictured Win as she’d been the last time she’d seen her, her dark blond hair pulled
back in a ponytail and her girl next door approachableness only slightly tempered by the wistful expression on her face.
“Yeah, you told me what happened to
her,” Everett said. It was quiet in the car again as he negotiated another
sharp turn, and as Poppy watched the car’s lights skim over an entrance to an
old logging road. She smiled. She and Win had driven down that road as
teenagers, looking for bears at dusk.
“All right,” she said, after a few
more minutes, “we’re getting close. After this next curve, it’s the first
driveway on the left.” And, suddenly hungry, she added, “Here’s hoping Win’s
got some leftovers from dinner.”
“Yeah, and here’s hoping she’s in a
good mood,” Everett added wryly.
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Book Description:
What starts out as a joke turns into a disaster when overnight Gnarly becomes the front runner—at which point his political enemies take a page straight out of Politics 101. What do you do when you’re behind in a race? Dig up dirt on the front runner, of course.
Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries. The twelfth installment in the Mac Faraday Mystery series, Candidate for Murder will be released June 2016.
