From my backlist: Musical Chairs by Amy Poeppel

413 pages

Women’s Fiction

Pub date: 21 July 2020

Four stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟

My thoughts:

This is the perfect book to pick up as one gets ready to go on summer vacation. It offers a reminder that summers do not always go as planned but, nonetheless, can be marvelous.

Bridget is planning a perfect time away with her new romantic partner. She does all that she can to make her country home ready for him but…

Bridget is surrounded by family and friends, sometimes more than she expected. Her adult children arrive with their stories and issues, her best friend (Will) comes to stay, and there are also Bridget’s father and sister in prime roles. What will happen to all of them over the course of the novel?

In addition to the engaging plot, I liked the music background of the story. It makes the title of the novel apt and open to more than one meaning.

Bridget’s father is very well known in musical circles. Bridget, herself, is part of a trio with Will. Their experiences enliven the plot.

This summer there are surprises and memories. Share in them by picking up this excellent summer read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for this title. All opinions are my own.

Description:

from the publisher

“A fiercely funny tale of family, friendship, and later-in-life love.” —People

“Poeppel has created a story that is well thought out, well plotted, well written, and fully developed. A delightful novel that celebrates the messiness and joy to be found in real life.”—Kirkus Reviews(starred review)

“A hilariously heartfelt, witty novel.” —Woman’s World

The award-winning, “quick-witted and razor-sharp” (Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six) author of Limelight and Small Admissions returns with a hilarious and heartfelt new novel about a perfectly imperfect summer of love, secrets, and second chances.

Bridget and Will have the kind of relationship that people envy: they’re loving, compatible, and completely devoted to each other. The fact that they’re strictly friends seems to get lost on nearly everyone; after all, they’re as good as married in (almost) every way. For three decades, they’ve nurtured their baby, the Forsyth Trio—a chamber group they created as students with their Juilliard classmate Gavin Glantz. In the intervening years, Gavin has gone on to become one of the classical music world’s reigning stars, while Bridget and Will have learned to embrace the warm reviews and smaller venues that accompany modest success.

Bridget has been dreaming of spending the summer at her well-worn Connecticut country home with her boyfriend Sterling. But her plans are upended when Sterling, dutifully following his ex-wife’s advice, breaks up with her over email and her twin twenty-somethings arrive unannounced, filling her empty nest with their big dogs, dirty laundry, and respective crises.

Bridget has problems of her own: her elderly father announces he’s getting married, and the Forsyth Trio is once again missing its violinist. She concocts a plan to host her dad’s wedding on her ramshackle property, while putting the Forsyth Trio back into the spotlight. But to catch the attention of the music world, she and Will place their bets on luring back Gavin, whom they’ve both avoided ever since their stormy parting.

With her trademark humor, pitch-perfect voice, and sly perspective on the human heart, Amy Poeppel crafts a love letter to modern family life with all of its discord and harmony. In the tradition of novels by Maria Semple and Stephen McCauley, Musical Chairs is an irresistibly romantic story of role reversals, reinvention, and sweet synchronicity.

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Advance Praise

“Amy Poeppel’s charming Musical Chairs made me laugh out loud. Poeppel has a remarkable talent for creating the very best kind of mayhem. Drunken dinner parties, a runaway cat, brilliant musicians, a tattooed florist, drop dead gorgeous twins, crumbling old houses, beautiful Connecticut, secrets and lies—and finally—a wedding, the true hallmark of any delicious comedy. Reading this book was such a pleasure.” —Marcy Dermansky, critically acclaimed author of Very Nice
“What kind of writer is Amy Poeppel?  Warm, generous, funny, and full of surprises. In her third novel, a large, musical family (and their many friends, lovers, and groundskeepers) assemble in the shabby chicest corner of rural Connecticut over the course of one long, hot summer. What ensues is part classical French farce, part touching family comedy, and 100% page-turning delight.  Cue up some chamber music, pull out a lawn chair, and prepare to binge read this gleefully entertaining novel.” —Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life

“In this funny, profound, and brilliantly alive novel about all the messy, wise and wonderful chords that love can strike in our lives, Poeppel gathers together fathers and daughters, old flames and new sparks, music, writing and gardening, to explore what it really means to feel at home, and how life can open you up in ways you never saw coming. Set against the backdrops of Manhattan and the Connecticut countryside, Musical Chairs is profound, delicious and soul-stirring.”
— Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling Author of Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow

“Full of Poeppel’s signature charm and wit, Musical Chairs is a romantic-comedy-of-errors with a smart, edgy twist on the possibilities that might be revealed in life’s third act. Touching, full of humanity, and the absolute definition of ‘compulsively readable!’”
— Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist

From the Publisher: