Bitsy's Bait and BBQ

Bitsy's Bait and BBQ, Pamela Morsi

Emma and Katy and Katy's son Josh, are driving into the Ozarks to look at a Bed and Breakfast that Emma just purchased with her divorce settlement.  On eBay.  Turns out, B&B has different meanings, the girls find themselves learning about spinners, lures and smokers.

Several months in, just as they are getting settled in, Katy's mamma's boy ex-husband and mother-in-law show up wanting to take custody of 5-year-old Josh.

The usual is what happens, I guess.  The rich, urban, socialite Mom thinks Katy is down home trash and not good enough for her son.  She also happens to think her son isn't good enough to be her son, and sees a second chance in trying to raise her grandson.

Emma is the overprotective older sister who thinks the rich-boy Sean (ex-husband) isn't good enough for her sister, whom she secretly sort of resents because she's always making sacrifices for her.

The rest of the characters - the people who live in Warbler Lake - are brilliant.  And the stuff about fishing and barbecue was a lot of fun and made the other formulaic stuff tolerable.  The romance between Sean and Katy sort of felt contrived, and the last "epilogue" chapter was a hodge podge wrap up that I skimmed through.

Nadine and her three kids were more interesting than either of the two main characters, and I would have liked to see or hear more about her and how she resolved things.  In truth, I think the novel spent more time on backstory for the interesting side characters than it did the two leads.  Which maybe is a bit backwards?

Any who.  I liked it.  It's not really Southern but its very Fannie Flagg.  It was fun to read about the fishing and bbq, and some of it was realy brilliant.