"The plan was simple. Everything else was not.
Six-year-old Adalia Wright has an unusual way of processing grief. She buries dolls in the backyard. She reads National Geographic for tips on Aboriginal and Aztec death rituals instead of reaching for storybooks. And she has recently attempted to mummify the family cat in vegetable oil and towels--an indignity the cat, for the record, thoroughly enjoyed.
Her grandmother Winnie has had enough. Convinced Adalia would be better off with her maternal grandparents, she rounds up her husband Abe and her two elderly siblings, loads everyone into an aging van, and sets off cross-country. A two-day drive. A perfectly reasonable plan.
Nothing about it is reasonable.
What begins as a straightforward trip accumulates, almost against its will, a socially anxious stranger, a prickly hedgehog, and a three-legged rescue dog. Mechanical failures pile up. Wrong turns multiply. Siblings revolt. And somewhere between heartbreak and hilarity, Winnie begins to wonder whether she had the whole thing backward all along--and whether the stubborn, peculiar little girl she was desperate to let go might be the very thing holding her heart together.
Darkly comic, warm-hearted, and sneakily wise, A Perfectly Reasonable Plan is a story about the families we're given, the ones we accumulate along the way, and the wonderful love that refuses to stay behind.
Recipes and discussion questions can be found in the audiobook companion PDF download."
"Making the perfect match is like arranging the perfect bouquet—and no one is better at it than Delphinium Hayes.
Except when it comes to making a match for herself.
As far as hidden talents go, she is blessed with one of the more unique ones. With the slightest passing whiff, she knows someone’s most admirable or weediest characteristic. This peculiar perception never fails to give her an advantage in understanding people—except for one man, whose scent doesn’t seem to match his demeanor.
Prim and proper Elliot Sturgis, director of Moonberry Lake’s Gardens Assisted Living and Senior Care Facility, carries the scent of violets—meaning love and loyalty—yet is strict and unwavering in his determination to stop a group of his wily residents from sneaking over to Delphinium’s shop to play cards in the flower cooler. But the more glimpses Delphinium gets of the soft side beyond Elliot’s harsh exterior, the more she understands his scent—and her intrigue deepens as sparks fly.
The crowd in her cooler isn’t Delphinium’s only problem. Behind on the mortgage payments and on the verge of losing her shop to foreclosure, Delphinium isn’t sure where to turn for help. But God has a funny way of putting the right people in the right place at the right time …"
"Cora Matthews’s life is a mess. A broken engagement and the unexpected death of her mother have left her wondering if things will ever return to normal.
Whatever “normal” is.
It certainly isn’t what she finds at Moonberry Lake. After she receives her family’s dilapidated lakefront lodge as an inheritance—with a surprising condition attached—Cora finds her life overrun by a parade of eccentric neighbors who all have something to say and something to teach her.
As Cora works to put her life back together, she must decide if she is willing to let go of the past, open her heart to love, and embrace the craziest version of family and home she could ever have imagined."
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