Embracing the Lemonade Life by Sandra Sookoo

Contemporary romance.  Clara is a cancer survivor.  Her experience with the disease has forced her to take a look at life and decide how she wants to live it.  She is intimately aware that life can be short.  Her philosophy is “When life gives you lemons, use them for lemonade or let them sour your life.”  She doesn't want to live a sour life and makes some damn fine lemonade.  She has moved to the small town of Bridgewater, Indiana where she’s opened up the Cute as a Button B & B.

When Jake returns to Bridgewater, the town he left skid marks leaving, for his friend’s wedding he puts the wedding party up at the Cute as a Button B & B.  He can’t figure out whether Clara is cute or crazy but he wants to get to know her better.  He is amazed by her attitude and yearns to understand it.  But can they have a future?  He lives in the big city and her illness is a factor to be considered.

Sandra Sookoo writes so many genres I never really know what I’m getting when I pick up one of her books other than a great story.  This could have been really sappy and or saccharine but it was neither.   Both characters seemed very real to me.  I laughed, I cried, and I sighed.  What a wonderful story.