Meanwhile, Piper turns out to be a far more complicated woman than she seems on the surface. As much as Cornelia likes Lake, she senses Lake holding back at crucial moments and responds in kind. Dev suspects there might be more to the move, that Lake may be moving them closer to the mystery father he’s never met. Cornelia does begin a fledgling friendship with another newcomer, Lake, a waitress who has moved from California to enroll her genius 13-year-old son Dev in a special school after his previous school punished him for being too smart. Particularly unwelcoming is her tightly wound neighbor Piper, who is as sharp-tongued as she is judgmental about fashion, flowers and childrearing. Having moved out of New York City after the double whammy of a miscarriage and 9/11, Cornelia finds herself a shunned outsider among the community’s perfect blond matrons. There seem to be subplots galore, but as loves and losses, yearnings and secrets surface, the threads of the subplots begin to mesh, weaving into a wonderfully patterned tale, one I wished would go on for many more hours.In de los Santos’s second novel ( Love Walked In, 2006), Cornelia Brown returns the as heroine, now married to handsome oncologist Teo and trying to make a new home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Sidelined by her perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed, scathingly judgmental new neighbor, Cornelia befriends an elusive single mom with a brilliant, lovable teenage son I’d be more than happy to adopt. Front and center is Cornelia, a petite, plucky, thirtysomething with enormous generosity of heart, and a husband to die for, who leaves the urban hubbub of Manhattan for the kinder, gentler suburbs. The characters, save the few irredeemably unlikable, are all people that grow on you in the best way. It’s the kind of guilty pleasure that ranks with a pint of Haagen Dazs chocolate chocolate chip, a not-too-dainty spoon and no one to share it with.
Belong to Me, Marisa de los Santos’ latest, is unabashedly and wholeheartedly a woman’s book, and in this audio incarnation, read with warmth and understanding by Julia Gibson, it’s the perfect summer listen.
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