Oh, hey! Long time no blog. Sorry about that. The last couple of weeks have been busy at work and in our personal lives, and I was feeling my usual April blues, anxiously waiting for warm weather and sunshine. But after a long, cold winter it finally feels like spring in New England, and the kitchen renovation is now FINISHED!!!

I will write a post with pictures of the final product once we’re done unpacking boxes and hanging up pictures.

To help get me through the long, cold month of April, I really enjoyed reading Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson. I picked up this book when I was a member of Book of the Month Club last year. At the time I had received a bunch of second-hand books that came with rave reviews from a friend, so I put my membership on hold, but I plan to start it back up again soon, and recommend Book of the Month Club to anyone who loves to read. This novel was one of the last books I received from the club, but I hadn’t read it until now.

Perfect Little World a quirky story about an 18 year-old young woman named Izzy, who finds out she’s pregnant by her art teacher right before she graduates from high school. Izzy and the father of her baby decide to make a life together until he dies before the baby is born. Anxious to cover up the result of their son’s affair with a student, the art teacher’s wealthy parents offer to enroll Izzy in the ten-year long psychology and child development experiment they’re financing called the Infinity Project, where she and 9 expecting couples would live in a science-based commune. The parents all chip in with childcare and cooking/cleanup responsibilities in exchange for more time outside the commune to go back to college, further their careers, or pursue other hobbies they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford, or have the time for if they were raising their children separately. The children receive the very best schooling with all the resources they could ever want, all while growing up with 9 other brothers and sisters their same age. The story follows Izzy, her son, and the other families, and examines the challenges that come when that many people with their own personalities, flaws, and baggage, live together as one big “Family.”

I found the concept very interesting and the story sweet. I’m still amazed that how Kevin Wilson managed to paint such a vivid picture of so many characters. I bookmarked two pages early in the novel that gave a brief description of each of the other families when Izzy first meets them, expecting to need to reference the pages later when I started to lose track of who is married to whom, but I didn’t once have to go back. I found myself consistently surprised by small character developments, and I was also surprised by the ending, but that made me enjoy the story even more. This novel was just the warm, comforting escape I needed to get through those last cold, rainy days of April.

Now we’re into May and I’ll be reading Make Trouble by Cecile Richards.

Happy Sunday!