Author: Cyndy Salzmann
Liz Harris has had the most awful morning. The dog ate a tube of cinnamon flavored toothpaste and threw it up all over the bathroom. Her teen daughter (the one responsible for leaving the toothpaste in the dog’s reach) has a math test she must take so she isn’t available to clean the mess. And, her son, the one who noticed it, wants nothing to do with it. Liz isn’t sure how to cope. So she turns to her friends, members of the Friday Afternoon Club (otherwise known as FAC) to vent.
When Liz arrives, her own problems pale in comparison. Liz’s friend, Lucy, is still missing. She hasn’t come to the club meetings since—well, since her husband and her mother died in quick succession, so the members of FAC decide to take the club meeting to Lucy. But Lucy seems a shell of her former self. The house is a mess, Lucy has lost weight, and they discover that on top of everything else, Lucy’s aunt has moved into a retirement village and left her house for Lucy to deal with! The friends take things into their own hands. But what should they tackle first? Lucy’s aunt’s house or Lucy’s mother’s, also left to Lucy?
DYING TO DECORATE is a cute story with some wonderful sounding recipes gracing the beginning of each chapter. I am anxious to try some of them. I read DYING TO DECORATE in its beginning stages, and it was fun to read it now in the published form and see the many changes. I could identify with Liz—but in many ways I wish the book would have been written in Lucy’s point of view as I think it would have made the story stronger.
DYING TO DECORATE is written in first person, so Liz’s thoughts are the only ones we are privy to. I could identify with her frustrations with her teen children and dog. I wish I were a member of FAC. It is something all women need—a close group of friends ready to share everything.
Reviewed by Laura Hilton
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