The Page Turner by Viola Shipman

 

Title:  The Page Turner

Author:  Viola Shipman

Narrated by:  Katharine Chin

Publisher: Harlequin Audio

Length: Approximately 9 hours and 49 minutes

Source: Audiobook and ebook review Copy from NetGalley.  Thank-you!

 

Where is your favorite setting for a book?  The Page Turner by Viola Shipman is set in South Haven Michigan with action also taking place in the Hamptons and New York City.  I loved the South Haven, Michigan, setting as I grew up in southwest Michigan.  Our family loved to visit South Haven and swim at the beach.  My Great Uncle and Aunt lived in a beautiful historic home in South Haven.  It’s a beautiful community.  I now live in a Lake Michigan Community in Wisconsin.  The lake vibes in this novel were very relatable.

 

Emma Page has just graduated from the University of Michigan and is trying to figure out what to do with her life.  Her parents own The Mighty Pages publishing house, which prints literary fiction.  Emma has secretly written a romance novel and loves romance just as her grandmother did.  When Emma discovers a family secret, how will it affect them and the man who is trying to take their family down?

 

My thoughts on this novel:

·       Viola Shipman is the pen name of Wade Rouse in honor of his beloved Grandma.  He writes the best female characters that really speak to me.  His Grandma taught him well!

·       I read this novel in May as part of the Brenda Novak Book Group.  I loved Wade Rouse’s interview as part of the Brenda Novak Book Group.  He is delightful and his interview was so interesting.

·       GiGi, Emma’s Grandmother, was a wonderful character.  She is the type of loving and sassy Grandma everyone should have.  I was blessed to have one myself.  I loved how she loved to foster the love of reading in her kids and grandkids.

·       There were interesting literary discussions and allusions throughout the novel.  Who gets to decide what is the great American novel?  Why is romance always looked down upon as a genre?

·       The novel was a love letter to Michigan with blueberries, the state flag, roadside farms, lighthouses, Lake Michigan beaches, etc.

·       Jonathan Livingston Seagull is mentioned a lot.  I have never read it, but it has been on my TBR forever.  Have you read this novel?  If so, what do you think?

·       This novel also highlighted family dysfunction and pulling together to protect your family overall.

·       I am looking forward to his next book that will be set in Palm Springs.  It is called Thank-you for Being a Friend and seems to be Golden Girls inspired.

·       I enjoyed listening to this book on audiobook.  It was entertaining and captured my interest on long drives.

Overall, The Page Turner by Viola Shipman was a perfect summer read with great characters, a love of literature, beaches, and a sinister villain.

The Wishing Bridge by Viola Shipman (TLC Book Tours)

 

Do you have any towns or areas you visit for the Christmas season?

Frankenmuth, Michigan is a beautiful town known as Michigan’s “Little Bavaria” and takes celebrating Christmas seriously with a giant Christmas store, Bronner’s and a beautifully decorated town. I have only visited Frankenmuth once while I was in college, but I would love to visit again.  Frankenmuth is the setting of The Wishing Bridge by Viola Shipman.

Henrietta “Henri” Wegner grew up in Frankenmuth and her parents started Wegner’s, an iconic Christmas store that draws tourists from far and wide.  The business has had troubles making it through COVID and tough competition from Amazon.  Henri left Frankenmuth after graduating from the University of Michigan and works for a mergers and acquisitions company in Detroit.  Her boss sends her home for the holidays to make a big deal for a corporation to take over her family’s business.  Once home, she reconnects with her best friend, Sofie, and her childhood sweetheart, Shep.  She discovers that Shep has been divorced for five years and he makes it clear to her that he is ready to date again.  Henri must decide, does she want to help her family business get back on track, or does she want to finish the big corporate deal that will help her keep her current job?

I loved this book.  Viola Shipman (pen name of Wade Rouse) writes vivid characters with great depth.  I loved Henri, Sofie, Shep, and Henri’s entire family.  I could imagine Henri trying to find success in the world, but suddenly realizing all that she misses as she has strived for success.  She also has great flashbacks and memories of her Grandma that help her to shape her decisions as the novel progresses. I enjoyed that Henri was a class of ’85 graduate and a generation X protagonist in her fifties.  The only time I had to stretch my imagination was besides Henri’s parents still running their business, it seemed like there were a lot of people that worked at her family’s store still there from her childhood.  They would mostly likely be in their late 70’s or 80’s and that seemed to be stretching it on age to me.  The romance was sweet, and the setting was perfect.  I loved that Wegner’s was a veiled version of the real-life Bronner’s.

The extras is this novel are a treat.  The novella Christmas Angels is at the back of this book, as well as book club questions, and a very thoughtful letter to the readers.  I loved this quote in the letter, “The Wishing Bridge is about choice we make in our life – some good, some bad – but realizing if we have a strong foundation, it is never too late to cross that bridge in our lives to become the people we dreamed we could become.”  What a perfect description.

Favorite quotes from the novel:

“Memories serve as the voice to our souls, the soundtrack to our lives.”

“The holidays are hard for a lot of us.  Too many people acting like the world is perfect when others are battling a lot of bad memories, or loss.”

“It’s humbling and a bit terrifying to realize, when you really stop to think about it, that when you reach the age of fifty, there are only, perhaps five people in the universe who truly ‘get’ you.  And the sad part?  They all now probably live in a different city than you.”

“Time, there is never enough.”

The Wishing Bridge by Viola Shipman is a heartfelt, perfect novel about Christmas, the importance of family, and how it is never too late to make a change in your life.  I highly recommend it.

Book Source:  Review copy from Graydon Books as part of the TLC Book Tour. Thank-you!  Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

About The Wishing Bridge

• Publisher: Graydon House (November 7, 2023)

• Paperback: 336 pages

Workaholic Henrietta Wegner can feel her edge beginning to dull in middle age. Once the company’s hottest mergers and acquisitions executive, Henri can see the ambitious and impossibly young up-and-comers gunning for her job. When her boss makes it clear she’ll be starting the New Year unemployed unless she can close a big deal before the holidays, Henri impulsively tells him that she can convince her aging parents to sell Wegner’s—their iconic Frankenmuth, Michigan, Christmas store—to a massive, soulless corporation. It’s the kind of deal cool corporate Henri has built her career on.

Home for the holidays has typically meant a perfunctory twenty-four-hour visit for Henri, then back to Detroit as fast as her car will drive her. So turning up at the Wegner’s offices in early December raises some eyebrows: from her delighted, if puzzled, parents to her suspicious brother and curious childhood friends. But as Henri fields impatient texts from her boss while reconnecting with the magic of the store and warmth of her hometown, what sounded great in the boardroom begins to lose its luster in real life. She’s running out of time to pull the trigger on what could be the greatest success of her career…or the most awkward family holiday of her life.

About the author

Wade Rouse is a popular award-winning memoirist and internationally bestselling author of twelve books, which have been translated into twenty languages and selected as Today show Must-Reads, Indie Next Picks and Michigan Notable Books. Rouse writes fiction under his grandma’s name, Viola Shipman, to honor the woman whose heirlooms inspire his writing. He lives in Michigan and California, and hosts Wine & Words with Wade, A Literary Happy Hour, every Thursday. 

The Heirloom Garden by Viola Shipman

 

What is your favorite flower?

The Heirloom Garden by Viola Shipman was the March selection for the Page-turners Book Club at the Kewaunee Public Library.  I enjoyed reading this novel at the beginning of the month and it started me thinking of spring and my garden.

Abby Peterson has moved to Grand Haven, Michigan in 2003 with her young daughter Lily, and husband Cory.  Cory has just returned from the war in Iraq and is struggling with PTSD.  Abby is hoping for a new start in their rented home and has a new job as an engineer at a nautical paint manufacturer.  As the family works to build their lives back, they meet their old neighbor Iris.  Iris lives next door and has a beautiful garden that is walled off by a high fence.  She has been alone for a long time after losing her husband in World War II and her daughter to an illness afterwards.  She was a botanist who worked on propagating her own flowers including daylilies.  After she is befriended by Lily, will she be able to come out of her shell?

I loved this story.  It was beautiful and brought tears to my eyes.  I loved the structure of the novel that was in sections named after different flowers as they bloom through the year.  I loved that the story was narrated both by Abby and by Iris.  The story was in 2003 and also flashed back to World War II and after to tell Iris’s story.  I loved that it showed that you may make assumptions about a crabby old neighbor, but that they may have a story that is much deeper. 

As a female engineer, I also loved how Abby’s travails at work was written.  It was so very relatable, especially being the only female engineer at the table.  It’s like Viola Shipman had been to work with me early in my career.  I enjoyed that the author had Abby be a female engineer and Viola a botanist.  It was great to see science careers in a novel!

This book made me really want to visit Grand Haven.  As a kid, we always went to South Haven and Holland to the beach, but never Grand Haven.  I grew up in Michigan, but now live in a small town in Wisconsin on Lake Michigan.  I love flowers and growing them in my own yard.  I have a lot of favorites, but I love Irises and I love peonies.  I have a peony from my Great Grandma Kile that I enjoy seeing bloom each year.  I just planted one last fall from my Grandma Arlt, and I can’t wait for it to bloom. 

Favorite Quotes:

“What I know is that war, sadly, is sometimes necessary not simply to protect a people but to save the world from evil.  But too often war is used as a way to keep people in fear and, thus, in line.  It is a false symbol of safety.”

“On the highway, Cory grabs my hand and holds it until we pull in the driveway, me thinking of trillium the entire way, of how we are all just like them, so fragile, so in need of protection, but also, always, a harbinger of hope.”

Overall, The Heirloom Garden by Viola Shipman was a beautiful story full of family, hope, and gardens.  This was my first Viola Shipman novel, and it won’t be my last!

Book Source:  Kewaunee Public Library