"Heart of Palm" by Laura Lee Smith is about the Bravos family of Utina, Florida. Dean ran out on his wife and four surviving kids twenty years earlier. Together they've managed to survive without him, although a little worse for wear. Frank runs the restaurant his mother Alma bought after Dean ran off, and now real estate developers are sniffing around, wanting to buy the house and the restaurant for millions of dollars to build a marina. Frank and Alma don't want to sell but older brother Carson does, and since Dean still owns half of everything he finds him to help back him up. It was a good story about how crazy families can be.
"Joyland" by Stephen King was great fun. Set in the summer of 1973, college student Devin Jones takes a job at an amusement park known as Joyland. Like any good amusement park, it is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a young woman who was murdered on one of the rides. Devin's friends Tom and Erin are skeptical, until they ride the haunted house ride and Tom sees her ghost. Erin starts doing research to see if she can find out more about the other murders that were committed by the same man. Meanwhile, Devin stays and continues working at Joyland after the park closes for the winter. In town he meets a sweet young boy named Mike who is dying of MD. Mike's mom is very overprotective of her son, but all Mike wants to do is go to the amusement park he's heard all summer long. Devin arranges it and Mike has a wonderful time. Mike is also psychic, and ends up saving Devin's life. It was a great quick read.
"Aviator's Wife" by Melanie Benjamin is a fictionalized account of Anne Lindbergh. From marrying Charles to watching her firstborn son kidnapped and murdered, to having to flee the country because of the never ending houding by the press, to Charles' Nazi leanings that caused them both so much pain, and later, the truth about his infidelity and other families in Europe comes out as he lays dying in Hawaii. It was very touching.
"Autobiography of Us" by Aria Beth Sloss wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Rebecca's family is just barely hanging on in Pasadena, surrounded by wealth and leisure. She becomes friends with Alex, who is rich and reckless and lots of fun. Together the two girls go off to college together but one night of drunken indiscretion shatters the friendship and they don't see each other for years. Rebecca marries a man she doesn't realize is trying to hide the fact that he's gay (the book takes place in the late 1950s, early 1960s) and moves to New York City. After her mother dies she returns to Pasadena for the funeral and reunites with Alex. Alex is miserable but won't admit it. I don't know, I just didn't find it as interesting as I'd hoped.
"Forbidden" by Tabitha Suzma wasn't as good as I'd hoped, either. The premise sounded good: Lochan and Maya are only in their teens, but because their father ran off and their mother is a drunk who likes to pretend she doesn't have five children at home, they've been forced to grow up before their time. They take care of the younger kids, the house, paying the bills, going to the store, all the things the adults should be doing. This of course really resonated with me because of my own similar childhood. But then Lochan and Maya realize they are falling in love with each other in a romantic way. They try to fight it, but eventually succumb to their teenage hormones. Lochan is terrified they'll be sent to prison if found out, since even consensual incest is illegal in the UK (where the book takes place). The ending really killed the book for me, I was enjoying their struggle and their fears until the last 100 pages or so.
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