book review+author interview: The Return to Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs

Title: Return to Willow Lake
Author: Susan Wiggs
Publisher: Harlequin
Published on: September 1, 2012
Source: publisher

Sonnet Romano's life is almost perfect. She has the ideal career, the ideal boyfriend, and has just been offered a prestigious fellowship. There's nothing more a woman wants - except maybe a baby.sister? When Sonnet finds out her mother is unexpectedly expecting, and that the pregnancy is high-risk, she puts everything on hold - the job, the fellowship, the boyfriend - and heads home to Avalon. Once her mom is out of danger, Sonnet intends to pick up her life where she left off. But when her mother receives a devastating diagnosis, Sonnet must decide what really matters in life, even of that means staying in Avalon and taking a job that forces her to work alongside her biggest, and maybe her sweetest, mistake - award-winning filmmaker Zach Alger. So Sonnet embarks on a summer of laughter and tears, of old dreams and new possibilities, and of finding the home of her heart. At once heartbreaking and uplifting, Return to Willow Lake plumbs the deepest corners of the human heart, exploring the bonds of family, the perils and rewards of love, and the true meaning of home. (goodreads)

My Thoughts:

It was a nice story. I certainly learned a couple of life lessons from it. Such as the right time for love will come, we just have to wait patiently for it. And you must know what is really important in your life. Things like that, that also felt kind of rubbed off at times because it was repeated many times, not that it's all bad. 

The novel also touched a sensitive topic to me- cancer. My dad suffered the disease last year, and just reading through some of the experiences by the character with cancer (i won't spoil who) made me remember things that happened last year, and yeah okay, made me cry loads all over again.

Return to willow lake is a story about coming home. Coming home as in not only to the place where you grew up, but also relearning your priorities in life and also relearning who you are as a person. Sonnet, the main character, went through a lot of difficult decision making  and a lot of heavy dilemmas before she realized something's changing in her life.

The novel was not all good for me though. I also had several problems with it, but not entirely unmanageable. I found some things to be way too clich'ed. At other times, I felt the conversations the characters had with each other are repetitions. It feels like the story dangled when it reached the middle. It reached a point where I felt like we were running around the bush, and also beating around it. The ending was also expected, but equally good.

Overall, the novel was good, and satisfying.

Q & A with author Susan Wiggs 

Hi Susan! Welcome to Coffee, books and me.

SW: Thank you for having me. You have a very cute blog. Dangerous, too. I spent way too much time reading here.

How does it feel releasing a book after two decades in publisher? Does the feeling get old? :)

SW: No way. This is the most fun you can have on the job. It’s like sending your kid off to kindergarten for the first time, excited to see what the world will make of her. 

What is the inspiration behind the Lakeshore Chronicles?

SW: My nostalgia for the beauty of upstate New York, my still-unrequited yearning to go to summer camp, my inability to let go of characters after their story is done, and of course, feedback from readers, who love big emotional stories about people they can relate to on some level...It’s a really good fit for me, creatively.

In building your characters, do you relate them to some people you know?

SW: In bits and pieces. Does that make me like Dr. Frankenstein? I might “borrow” a trait from one person and add it to the trait of another. Sonnet in RETURN TO WILLOW LAKE has a bit of me in her, a bit of my daughter, and my mother’s common sense. Some of the names in the book are borrowed, too. The dog’s name and the name of the foundation, for example. They are in honor of a lovely woman named Judy for her donation to the local animal shelter. 

How about the certain topics/subjects touched in your novels, are they somehow related to you

(like you know some people who underwent them) or they are completely fictional?

SW: Both. I haven’t had anything as disastrous as Nina’s ordeal happen to me, but it certainly happens. But I’ve been proposed to with a message in a bottle, so yeah, that’s related to me. Other stuff, I make up out of whole cloth, although all are grounded in reality. All are things that could have happened.

10 years from now, what and how do you see yourself?

SW: Younger and thinner than I am now. No idea how I’m going to accomplish that. I’m open to suggestions.

I'm curious, what is the most important and exciting thing we need to watch out for in "Return to

Willow Lake"?

SW: The endpapers! Seriously, check them out. They’re amazing. My publisher commissioned an artist to render illustrated maps of Avalon and Willow Lake. You’re gonna love it.

Thank you so much for answering my questions! All the best to you!

SW: Back atcha. Happy reading!

About the Author:

Susan Wiggs's life is all about family, friends...and fiction. She lives at the water's edge on an island in Puget Sound, and she commutes to her writers' group in a 17-foot motorboat. She serves as author liaison for Field's End, a literary community on Bainbridge Island, Washington, bringing inspiration and instruction from the world's top authors to her seaside community. (See www.fieldsend.org) She's been featured in the national media, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation," and is a popular speaker locally and nationally. 
According to Publishers Weekly, Wiggs writes with "refreshingly honest emotion," and the Salem Statesman Journal adds that she is "one of our best observers of stories of the heart [who] knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book." Booklist characterizes her books as "real and true and unforgettable." She is the recipient of three RITA (sm) awards and four starred reviews from Publishers Weekly for her books. The Winter Lodge and Passing Through Paradise have appeared on PW’s annual "Best Of" lists. Several of her books have been listed as top Booksense picks and optioned as feature films. Her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages and have made national bestseller lists, including the USA Today, Washington Post and New York Times lists. 
The author is a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book. Readers can learn more on the web at www.susanwiggs.com and on her lively blog at www.susanwiggs.wordpress.com. (from goodreads)