Author: Michele Gorman
Publisher: Notting Hill Press
Publication Date: February, 2013
Genre: Chick-Lit
Description: Bella's career and relationship are her life's foundationwear: not glamorous and perhaps a bit binding, but supportive enough... until she realizes that they are not enough. Her life is sagging badly. She's never been in love with her boyfriend, despite a decade together. And somehow she stopped being a musician-with-a-day-job and became a consultant-who-was-musical. So she takes a terrifying leap of faith, leaving her relationship and resolving to follow her musical dreams no matter what.
Unfortunately, the life you walk away from doesn't always let you walk away.
With a wonderfully warm and witty cast of friends, all navigating between their ideals and the realities they face, together they'll find out what love and compromise really mean in this empowering tale about grasping life with both hands.
My Thoughts: This book was provided by the publisher in return for an honest review. With Bella Summer Takes A Chance, new-to-me author Michele Gorman introduces the reader to a character who grabs her life by both hands and gives it a thorough shake and toss despite no guarantee that she will end up successful. When we first meet Bella, she is coming to the realization that her life has become stagnant. She is not in love with her boyfriend of ten years and never has been. She wants the grand passion and romance and in spite of her best friend Kat’s assertion that there is no such thing, Bella is determined not to settle. Not with love or her career. Bella also decides to begin seriously pursuing her singing career.
She moves in with Frederick after she answers his advertisement for a roommate and begins pounding the pavement looking for singing gigs. I really enjoyed reading Bella’s story. I found it to be a fast read and very entertaining with several laugh out loud moments. Many of my favorite parts of this book were scenes that Frederick was in. Bella is convinced he is gay, despite his insistence that he’s “as straight as George Bush.” Several times while reading, I laughed until tears ran down my face. From the outrageous things Fred says to Bella’s first post-breakup hook-up to the birth of a baby, I had to keep my tissue box nearby at all times to wipe my eyes and my glasses. There’s even a reference in this book to Sliding Doors, which is one of my all-time favorite movies.
Bella’s best friends, Kat, Clare and Faith brought a different but also wonderful angle to the story. Kat is Austrian and very direct. Clare and Bella work together. Faith works at a newspaper and by all outward appearances seems to be frivolous with shopping and going through boyfriends like water because they possessed irritating personality characteristics. I was actually prepared to not like Faith because I thought she was judgmental, but she turns out to be the most grounded of Bella’s friends and I found myself quickly liking her. Bella also befriends Marjorie, a ninety year old woman living in a care facility where Bella volunteers. Marjorie has lived a full and quite colorful and exciting life that she gleefully shares the details of with Bella.
My Final Verdict: Overall, I loved this story. I hated to see it end and I didn’t want to say goodbye to any of the characters. This book had a lot of surprises and left me with a good feeling for the direction the characters were all heading in. I highly recommend this story if you are looking for a hilarious chick-lit that pulls the reader in immediately for outrageous fun. Michele Gorman definitely knows how to tickle a reader’s funny bone and she has made me a devoted fan.
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