Put a Ring On It by Beth Kendrick

Put A Ring On It.  Beth Kendrick. Penguin Group (USA). November 2015. 320 pp.  ISBN#: 9780451474186.

Brighton Smith has just had the shock of her life.  Her fiancé arrives to pick her up and take her to work and demands his ring back.  In seconds, after a fight over zipper merges and some flying comments about his inability to pass the bar exam for a legal career, Brighton is no longer engaged.  She’s so upset she leaves work and takes off to visit a friend, Kira, in a town that has breakups as its central theme.  Crazy?  Sure is but it’s an intensely funny kind of crazy!

Brighton then finds out that her ex-fiance just got married, five minutes after meeting someone else, a woman named Genevieve.  So after having several champagnes and venting to the sexiest-looking guy, Jake Sorenson and she fly off to Nevada to be married in a drive-by wedding chapel.

Is this really Brighton the actuary who has plans for every occurrence in her life, who researches every situation one could possibly imagine? So not only is she married, but she’s also working at a jeweler’s shop which is something her family taught her years ago.  Turns out she’s very talented and knowledgeable about this field and she really cares about it, more so than her former actuary job at which she was also an ace.

The marriage apparently is for a thirty day trial period and here the fun continues – that is until Jake’s first wife shows up and a dog, Rory, becomes part of the challenging scenarios.

Put a Ring on It is hardly credible but it’s a cute read for those who want a hot romance story with a fairy tale ending.  The jewelry design/fix-it addition is interesting, especially the notion of a poison-ring.  Okay, fun story!

A Place We Knew Well: A Novel by Carol McCarthy

A Place We Knew Well: A Novel.  Carol McCarthy. Random House Publishing Group. September 2015.  272 pp.  ISBN#: 9780804176545.

Wes Avery is the owner of a Texaco gas station, happily married to Sarah and father to Charlotte.  Life has been moving along nicely, when Wes and his neighbors notice fighter jets flying overhead in massive groups along one of Florida’s busiest highways.  The military air traffic is much busier than normally occurs and then President John F. Kennedy announces that Cuba has nuclear missiles provided by Russia.  He is demanding their removal.  Avery’s assistant is a Cuban exile who is very upset by the ramped-up crisis situation as his mother is in the precise area where these missiles are located.

Charlotte is a typical teenager obsessed with friends and an upcoming dance for which she has no date.  When she accepts an offer from Avery’s assistant, her mother Sarah is completely undone.  She becomes obsessed with their home-made air raid shelter and is clearly mentally unraveling.

Here is the simple yet complex plot evolving in miniscule stages.  Russian ships approach Cuba with more nuclear arms.  Attempts are being made to negotiate a treaty with Turkey involved, promising equal removal of military arms that could destroy the world in seconds. 

The Avery family has its own secret that will threaten to be as devastating.  Avery’s former military experience knows more than the average Floridian that the increasing military build-up in Florida presages war-status action. 

By the time the chaos comes to the very brink of attack, the Avery family has completely come undone. 

A Place We Knew Well is a realistic account of the Cuban crisis that swept across America and Europe that is perfectly plotted, revealing the doubt, fear, anxiety, and psychic inability to cope that occurred in a very short time.  It was the first time that the existence of nuclear arms went beyond a contest of “Who’s got more toys?” to “This is for real, folks.” 

Nicely crafted fiction about all-too-real turmoil in American history, Carol McCarthy!