Sweet Love

April 7, 2008
A second chance at love for 40-something Boston TV reporter Julie Mueller, a single mom to a teenaged daughter, means disrupting life living above her parents in suburban Watertown, Mass. Julie's mother, cancer-survivor Betty, regrets her disapproval of Julie's first love, Michael Slayton—or so Julie suspects. With Betty's prodding, she packs herself off to the cooking school dessert course of renowned French chef Renée D'Ours, and finds that Michael, freshly returned from Washington, D.C., with a divorce in hand, is also attending. Despite the stock setup, Strohmeyer pulls off a memorable menu of believable relationship courses, seasoned with angst and humor.

June 1, 2008
Julie Mueller, an over-40 TV reporter, is finally up for a promotion to the national news, but because youth is favored in her profession over experience, the job might go to her younger coworker. Julie's personal life is as filled with drama as her professional life. Her elderly mother, Elizabeth, tries to undo a past mistake by reuniting Julie with Michael, the man from whom she steered her daughter away 20 years earlier. Elizabeth has arranged for Julie and Michael to attend a series of cooking classes together, and though the two have been feuding for years because of an exposé Julie did on Michael's former boss, when they meet in class, it's clear they still have feelings for each other. Not everything ends happily for Julie as she deals with her mother's failing health, the demands of her teenage daughter, and finding a lump in her breast, but the story ends well enough. This fast-paced novel, Strohmeyer's fourth outside of the Bubbles mystery series, features an accessible protagonist faced at turns with some of the saddest and most lighthearted situations life has to offer. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/1/08.]Karen Core, Detroit P.L.

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