Squash, Tomatoes, and Sugar Queen

It's been raining a LOT here in Memphis, over this Memorial Day weekend - and when it's not pouring, it's looking like it's about to. My veggies are loving it though! The squash plants don't have many leaves, but there's whole thickets of buds about to emerge. I can't wait till they bloom.


And here's my cherry tomato bush, clusters of little tomatoes all beaded with drips from the rain:


And since indoors is a good place to be when it's pouring, I'm glad I've got some good books to read. Here's Toby snuggling with one of the better ones I've read this week, Sarah Addison Allen's second book, Sugar Queen. Think he's trying to tell me he's ready for a little sugar?


Sugar Queen has some original ideas, one of which I can't tell you without giving a book spoiler. My favorite device is that one of the main characters has a book problem. Whenever she needs a book, the perfect one appears. Books follow her. Even when she doesn't want them to. Some short quotes:

For a while ... she thought her great-grandparents were surprising her with books. She'd find them on her bed, in her closet, in her favorite hideouts.... Books on games or novels of adventure when she was bored. Books about growing up as she got older. But when her great-grandparents confronted her about all the books ... she realized they weren't the ones doing it.
She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.

As the novel starts, Chloe had broken up with her boyfriend, Jake. Now she's being stalked by a couple of self help books on relationships, that she does NOT want to read:

She stomped to the bathroom to take a shower. Books never appeared in the bathroom. Like cats, they hated water. She stood under the spray until the water turned cold. Just when she thought she had washed all thoughts of Jake out of her mind, at least enough to sleep, she opened the bathroom door and found the books, stacked neatly one on top of the other on the floor in front of her.

"If I see you again tonight, I'm putting you both in the toilet," she said as she stepped over them and went to the bed to set her alarm.

When she turned around again, they were gone.

I truly enjoyed this one, as well as the first novel from Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells. If you read either one of her books on my recommendation, or if you've already read them,let me know!