BOOK REVIEW | A Table by the Window
A Table by the Window
By Lawana Blackwell
A Table by the Window is Lawana Blackwell’s first contemporary fiction effort. It is also the first book I have read by her. Not normally a historical fiction reader, I might check out her other novels. Mixed with a bit of romance and suspense, Blackwell offers readers a warm-hearted story about a young woman embracing all life has to offer for her.
Carley Reed is enabled to walk in her destiny thanks to a sizable inheritance left by her grandmother who has recently passed away. Carley hardly remembers her grandmother due to the isolation from the extended family per her trouble-prone mother. After a private investigator brings her the news, newly unemployed Carley takes a trip from San Francisco to her grandmother’s home in Mississippi. During her brief visit, she comes in contact with relatives she has never known.
Carley returns to San Francisco only to sorely miss the joy of an extended family and the hospitality of the South. She returns to the small town and permanently settles into her grandmother’s home. Soon Carley embarks on an entirely different career from her days as an English teacher. Her love for cooking turns into the idea of bringing a little of the West Coast to the South. Thus Annabel Lee Café is born and soon becomes an exciting eatery in the community.
The café becomes just one of many focal points in Carley’s life. She hires and takes in a troubled teenager and dates the town’s chief of police. While life seems ideal for Carley, lurking in the background are several mysteries, with one being an unsolved murder. Little does Carley know the murderer never left town and is a lot closer to her world than she can imagine.
I hope to see future contemporary fiction releases from Lawana Blackwell. This one was quite a meaty read, logging in at 413 pages. The length is well worth the read and the story moves along comfortably.
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