IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS
Therese Anne Fowler
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St. Martin's Press
6/7/22
Fiction
Hardcover, 352 pages
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"A tightly coiled family saga…Fowler expertly peels back the layers of each character in this page-turner, making for a highly entertaining summer read.”
-Booklist
"Austenesque...this goes down as easily as an Aperol spritz."
-Publishers Weekly
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Meet the Geller sisters: Beck, Claire, and Sophie, a trio of strong-minded women whose pragmatic, widowed mother Marti will be dying soon and taking her secrets with her. Marti has ensured that her modest estate is easy for her family to manage once she’s gone––including a provision that the family’s summer cottage on Mount Desert Island, Maine, must be sold, the proceeds split equally among the three girls.
Beck, the eldest, is a freelance journalist whose marriage looks more like a sibling bond than a passionate partnership. In fact, her husband Paul is hiding a troubling truth about his love life. For Beck, the Maine cottage has been essential to her secret wish to write a novel––and to remake the terms of her relationship.
Despite her accomplishments as a pediatric cardiologist, Claire, the middle daughter, has always felt like the Geller misfit. Recently divorced, Claire’s secret unrequited love for the wrong man is slowly destroying her, and she’s finding that her expertise on matters of the heart unfortunately doesn’t extend to her own.
Youngest daughter Sophie appears to live an Instagram-ready life, filled with glamorous work and travel, celebrities, fashion, art, and sex. In reality, her existence is a cash-strapped house of cards that may crash at any moment.
Enter C.J. Reynolds, an enigmatic southerner ex-con with a hidden past, who complicates the situation. All is not what it seems, and everything is about to change.
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Dear Reader,
Ah, the pleasures of a good summer book! When I was a kid, my summers were spent in four places: the woods, the baseball diamond, the library, and wherever I could sit and read without being disturbed.
With all the drama we’ve lived through these past few years, I needed to be reminded of simple pleasures. As a reader and as a writer, I needed wit and humor and lightness and happy endings. The result is It All Comes Down to This, my take on the dysfunctional family dramedy.
In this story, each character has issues, and each character has a secret they’ve been keeping from the others. The reader, though, is in on all of it, and the fun is in finding out how and when the revelations will occur—and what the fallout will be.
I love these characters and this book so much, and hope you’ll find it a real summertime treat!
With gratitude,
Therese
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IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS
Book Club Menu
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Given that much of this story takes place on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the expected go-to food option would be a lobster-based menu. And I wouldn’t call that a bad plan! But if you want to be a bit more adventurous, here are two fresh ideas:
Riffing on the food when we meet Paul—ramen, from Ippudo in New York City—you might do a “ramen bar” menu using noodles, a vegetarian-based broth—because it goes with everything you add in—and assorted egg, meat, and vegetable additions that could even include lobster! (Bonus if you also find yourselves discussing sex, as Paul reluctantly does).
The sweetheart of this story is an orphaned boy named Arlo whose favorite cereal is Grape Nuts. A fun challenge would be to have everyone create a shareable dish that in some way includes Grape Nuts. Think how happy Arlo would be with a menu like that!
Happy reading, and happy eating!
Therese
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©Copyright 2022 The Book Club Cookbook
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