Tampa Tribune Review

DEBUT IS MORE THAN JUST A BEACH BOOK

By STEPHANIE BONNETT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 26, 2009

"Love or Something Like It," by Deirdre Shaw (Random House, $22)

Deirdre Shaw's debut novel may appear to be a quick-read romance at first glance. It is a quick read, and it is a romance, but the story's heroine, Lacey Brennan, is a charming and delightful character whose gentle humor and insight makes reading pure pleasure.

Lacey moves from Manhattan to Los Angeles for love. For Toby. Toby is working in the Hollywood entertainment industry, so the social life is different from anything Lacey has ever experienced, but she navigates it more or less successfully.

Then she loses her job. And Toby leaves her. She has the distinct "pleasure" of overhearing him talk to his mother about how Lacey never knew how to take care of him like a wife should. She realizes Toby was more likely looking for a mother than a wife, but it's a lesson learned too late.

Lacey confronts Toby: "While we were splitting up, I'd thought Toby was careless. Why had he married me, I asked him, if he was only going to turn around and leave a year later? He didn't understand my question and looked at me, blinking, for a moment. 'Well, I wanted to at the time,' he said, as if that explained everything."

Lacey's story - her short marriage, her divorce, her career upheaval and her evolution - is treated with humor and grace. It may be a little more involved than the standard beach novel, but well worth the effort.

Reading Between the Vines

Here are some of the members of the illustrious Washington, DC-based book club Reading Between the Vines. You can tell by their club's name that they are women you'd want to hang out with. One of their members, the lovely Katie McKnight, graciously invited me to talk with them by phone about LOVE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT, which was their book club pick for that session. A very cool group of women with incredibly perceptive questions. I hadn't realized that the book took Lacey through a period following 9-11 through the Bush years, when the country was feeling just as lost and confused as Lacey was, until the book club pointed it out to me. So that was pretty thrilling.

I have done this book club by phone thing a few times, and it's really fun. It's always so interesting to see what people think of Lacey and of the book, and I end up learning new things about her and about the story, which is weird but cool. If you have a book club let me know. I'd love to talk to your club by phone. Just email me at loveorsomething@gmail.com. And in the meantime, here's to READING BETWEEN THE VINES. Thanks again for having me.

LOVE -- good for the brain?

Health Magazine calls LOVE a page-turner, and suggests that reading it might help improve your memory. Who knew? I love it.

Three Great Memory Boosters for a Feel-Younger Summer

From Health magazine

Take advantage of summer’s extra leisure time to improve your memory with these new brain tricks:

1. Warm up to a new sport A recent study from Columbia University Medical Center links blood glucose levels that rise as we age to memory lapses. Try a fun summer sport, like beach volleyball or swimming, to help your body regulate blood sugar.

2. Grab a page-turner New research from the Mayo Clinic shows that reading decreases your risk of developing mild memory loss by 30 to 50 percent, so don’t forget to toss a great book in your beach bag. A few to check out: Jodi Picoult’s new novel, Handle With Care (Atria, 2009; $27.95), A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff (Scribner, 2009; $26), or Love or Something Like It by Deirdre Shaw (Random House, 2009; $22).

3. Order the iced coffee Chill with three cups of caffeinated java a day and you could lower your risk of developing dementia by up to 70 percent, according to a study from the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Houston Society

A mention of the Houston book signing and party was featured in the Houston Chronicle's Society page. I got a big kick out of this, because any time my dad has a photo of himself taken, by say a waiter or someone he doesn't know well, he'll say, "This is for the Chronicle, so make it good." I can see that some people believe him when he says this, so I was glad to be part of something that finally landed him in the newspapers.

Clifford Pugh, a reporter for the River Oaks Examiner, among other publications in Houston, was a guest at my book party. He is a lot of fun, he asked the best questions at the Q&A, and he generally gave my whole event a bit of joie de vivre that might have been missing had he not been there. He mentioned my event in his column, Cliff Notes, for The River Oaks Examiner, and he also included the photo that you see at left.

I did a reading last night at Warwick's Books in La Jolla, California with the fabulous author Janelle Brown. Her first novel, ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING, came out with a huge splash last year, and has recently come out in paperback. Janelle and I carpooled, driving the two hours from L.A. to La Jolla together, despite having never met before I picked her up at her house yesterday afternoon. Luckily, we had a lot to talk about, and we got along famously, chatting the whole time, even while relaxing poolside at a hotel bar while killing time before the reading. "What if we had hated each other?" said Janelle at the end of the day. But we both agreed that because we had liked each other's books, we thought we would like each other. Funny how that works. One of the most wonderful things about having a book published has been meeting writers that I admire - and Janelle was definitely one of those writers.

I Heart Houston

My fabulous dad lives in Houston and many of his friends came to the reading there at Brazos Bookstore on May 12. Afterward, we had a party at Ninfa's, where there were long tables full of margaritas and quesadillas. It all felt very Texas. The women had lipstick on their teeth and called me darlin', and the men kept clapping on the shoulders and saying how proud my dad must be of me. While other places in the world seem more and more the same, Texas is truly its own world. I loved it. ( In the photo here, I'm pictured with Houston philanthropist and socialite Carolyn Farb, and her friend.)

PEOPLE Review

The book was reviewed in PEOPLE this week, which was really thrilling, and a big surprise. It got 3 1/2 stars out of 4. A lot of my friends and family have been emailing me to say they have seen it, which has been fun. It's a big relief, because I was afraid and semi-convinced that the book would appear and then disappear, which would be so sad. So at this point I feel really happy with how the book has been received. I was essentially holding my breath, and now I've been able to exhale a bit. So yay for PEOPLE.