BOOK: Lola's Secret by Monica McInerney

Lola's Secret by Monica McInerney, 304 pages

Aussie Author Challenge

For readers looking for an author to replace the late Maeve Binchy, I may have found someone. Monica McInerney writes the same style of book, with homey, real people facing life dilemmas. Her island is Australia instead of Ireland, but the same comforting feeling of getting to know a family is here. She even used the same type of set-up as A Week in Winter, with different guests coming to spend some time at a family style hotel. The guests were less of characters than in Binchy's, but used to the same effect.

Lola's Secret is actually a sequel to The Alphabet Sisters, and there are references to that book in this one, but without having read it, I still enjoyed Lola's Secret. Lola is the matriarch of the family, and she runs the family; she's everyone's favorite. Except her daughter-in-law. We get to know the granddaughters (the Alphabet Sisters), and great-granddaughters as everyone runs to Lola with their problems. One might even say that Lola gets overly involved, a tad too busy. She's a model, however, of an active senior, keeping mind and body and soul active.

 The title is a little misleading, as the secret wasn't that huge and my library made it even more misleading by slapping a 'mystery' sticker on the spine. I like my mysteries with a dead body, and it wasn't that type of book at all. It was a pleasant read however, and I've marked Monica McInerney's books as future reads in my library.