FRIDAY SPARKS: BOOK BEGINNINGS/FRIDAY 56 – “WINTER STREET”

Welcome to some bookish fun today as we share Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and as we showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

If you have been wanting to participate, but haven’t yet tried, now is the time!

What better way to spend a Friday?

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How quickly Fridays come!  In sorting through my book stacks, I realize that I have used up all the review books on hand…so here is a regular print book that I’m planning to read next week, since it has a holiday theme.  Winter Street, by Elin Hilderbrand, will take us to Nantucket during the winter months.

 

 

 

Beginning:  (December 23, Kelley)

He thinks nothing of walking into room 10 without knocking.  The door is unlocked, and George hasn’t checked in yet, anyway.  George is due on the eleven-thirty ferry with his 1931 Model A fire engine, a bespoke Santa Claus vehicle, but he was delayed because of snow in the western part of the state.  George has gamely brought the fire engine over and donned the red suit every December for the past twelve years.

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56:  (Margaret)

After she packs, she brews an espresso and sits down at her computer.  There are twelve more soldiers dead in Afghanistan.

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Blurb:  Kelley Quinn is the owner of Nantucket’s Winter Street Inn and the proud father of four, all of them grown and living in varying states of disarray. Patrick, the eldest, is a hedge fund manager with a guilty conscience. Kevin, a bartender, is secretly sleeping with a French housekeeper named Isabelle. Ava, a school teacher, is finally dating the perfect guy but can’t get him to commit. And Bart, the youngest and only child of Kelley’s second marriage to Mitzi, has recently shocked everyone by joining the Marines.

As Christmas approaches, Kelley is looking forward to getting the family together for some quality time at the inn. But when he walks in on Mitzi kissing Santa Claus (or the guy who’s playing Santa at the inn’s annual party), utter chaos descends. With the three older children each reeling in their own dramas and Bart unreachable in Afghanistan, it might be up to Kelley’s ex-wife, nightly news anchor Margaret Quinn, to save Christmas at the Winter Street Inn.

Before the mulled cider is gone, the delightfully dysfunctional Quinn family will survive a love triangle, an unplanned pregnancy, a federal crime, a small house fire, many shots of whiskey, and endless rounds of Christmas caroling, in this heart-warming novel about coming home for the holidays.

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Are you in the mood for an island retreat for the holidays?  I am eager to plunge into this one.

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