Happy Hour

Author: Michele Scott
ISBN: 9781449505578
Publisher: Create Space
Purchase Link: Happy Hour
Source: BookPleasures

What’s better than good food and great wine? The answer is “Friendship, good food and great wine.” Happy Hour is a novel about just that. Four women with careers and messy lives meet every Sunday in their home of Napa Valley for fun, fellowship and of course good food and great wine. Through it all the women discover that sometimes all you need is friendship. Friendship can be the best prescription for happy through the hard times and the good. Here’s a little about each character you’ll meet in this story.

Kat owns a restaurant with her second husband, Christian. They face the challenges of a blended family between her two sons and his daughter. In addition Kat also has her estranged mother to deal with since her parents split.

Alyssa is an artist and owns a gallery. She holds a dark secret that she hasn’t told anyone, including her friends. However, in order to move on with her life she must face this skeleton in her closet before its too late.

Danielle is a divorced vintner, a wine merchant/maker, with two rebellious teenage daughters. Mark, her high school crush reappears in her life just as she receives news that her daughter is pregnant. On top of that, the baby is diagnosed with down syndrome.

Jamie is the editor- in-chief of wine lovers magazine. Her husband, Nathan died of cancer leaving her to raise their daughter Maddie alone. Stuck with financial challenges and a senile mother-in-law is tough on Jamie. When Jamie meets Tyler, her life begins to transform as she removes her cocoon and starts to live again.

Happy Hour is a novel with no real male lead characters. The book focuses on these four strong, independent and unique women as they face the challenges of life together and rely on their friendship to see them through. They have a mutual love of great food and great wine that brings them together once a week and offers them a chance to escape and talk as only women can. Just as in life, the friends get frustrated with one another, but they find the strength to move on together even during the most difficult times. With lots of love, laughter, tears and acceptance these women learn how to overcome the past and look forward to the future.

This novel had a fairly steady pace. The storyline grabbed my attention but parts were slower than others for me. I found my attention wandering occasionally, but overall, found myself rooting for these women in the midst of messy and complicated lives. I easily understood them as mothers and working women. I laughed and cried along with them. The author makes the characters feel real. There were a few flaws in the novel due to typos and grammatical errors. I cannot be sure that these haven’t been fixed since the novel has been published. Overall, I enjoyed the story, the characters and the writing.