Book-loving Anne Gallagher of Mackinac Island, Mich., is the heart of Virginia Kantra's Anne of a Different Island, a captivating hometown romance that plays on Anne's love for L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series. She constantly equates people in her life to the characters in Montgomery's books, sometimes to her detriment.
Contemporary Anne is a schoolteacher in Chicago and is dating a handsome, career-obsessed pediatric oncologist. When she returns to bucolic Mackinac--a car-free island that still uses horses for transport--for her father's funeral, she crosses paths with Joe Miller, her dad's former apprentice and now the business successor to Gallagher Restoration. Tall, bearded Joe is a man of action rather than words, unlike Anne, who cannot help chattering (and sometimes oversharing), to her own chagrin. Back in Chicago, trouble brews with Anne's boyfriend and at her private-school job, where parents don't appreciate certain books she lends students, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Anne goes to Mackinac Island for the summer, where she struggles to connect with her taciturn and immensely practical mother while grieving her father. She attempts to revive her writing aspirations and becomes close with Joe's teenage half-sister, Hailey, even as Joe--who used to call her "the Pest"--becomes more central to her life.
Kantra (The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale) has written more than 20 novels, and her expertise is apparent. Kantra elegantly manages several additional narrative threads, such as grief, friendship, female ADHD, and what makes a life satisfying, including a compelling exploration of whether one must move away from home to find a life worth living. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator