Synopsis from Amazon:Katie's mother has done the unthinkable: she's responded yes to Katie's high-school-reunion invitation. Thin, beautiful, and a successful academic, Katie is only back in her hometown to complete her new book and help her mother take care of her nephew while Katie's sister is in rehab. Back in school she was teased mercilessly about her weight, and she is surprised at the reunion when most of her former tormentors apologize for their former transgressions. But one nasty encounter induces her to flee, and she runs straight into the subject of many adolescent fantasies: Paul Van Dorn, a professional hockey player for the New York Blades until too many concussions brought an end to his promising career. Katie and Paul secretly become a couple, but they have issues. She believes he is living in the past -- a place she does not want to be.
My rating: 4 stars
Excerpt: [from Chapter 1]According, to Katie Fisher, there were two types of people in the world: those who attended high school reunions, and those who did not. She herself definitely fell into the latter category, which is why she almost passed Diet Coke through her nose when her mother casually informed her she’d taken the liberty of RSVPing the invitation to Katie’s tenth high school reunion, saying she would attend.
“You did WHAT?” Katie gasped, inhaling an ice cube.
“I thought it would be fun,” her mother replied gaily, transferring a chicken casserole from the oven to the counter. She glanced over her shoulder at Katie with concern. “Are you all right, dear?”
“Fine,” Katie rasped. “Nothing like a good choke to end the day with.”
“Oh, you.” Her mother, a small, cheerful, doughy woman, clucked her tongue. She’d never quite gotten Katie’s sense of humor.
Having narrowly avoided death by ice cube, Katie filled with dread at the thought of revisiting Didsbury High’s class of ‘96. She wasn’t a curmudgeon, or antisocial, or uppity. Nor had she contracted an unsavory social disease the way Lulu Davenport had, farted in the middle of chemistry class like Magnus Pane, or ruined the school’s annual production of “The Nutcracker Suite” by crashing into a cardboard Christmas tree onstage like Bridget Devlin. Katie’s sin had been unpopularity. High school had been painful.
She’d grown up poor, the result of her father having died young, forcing her mother to support the family on a factory worker’s wages. It shouldn’t have made a difference—tiny Didsbury, Connecticut, prided itself on being a mixed community with rich and poor alike—but it did. In the status-driven world of high school, to be rich was to be “in,” to be poor “out.” Katie had been a girl in clean but unfashionable clothing who came from the wrong part of town. A girl who hadn’t had a home PC or a cell phone, who’d used public transportation because her mother hadn’t had a car she could toodle around in on the weekends. Not that she’d had anyone to toodle around with.
Katie had also been brainy. Super-scary-knows-the-answer-to-every-question-the-teacher-asks brainy. To be a teenage brainiac was completely uncool, especially for a girl. It scared people. Especially guys. Especially jocks.
Last but not least, Katie had also been fat, which in high school was the equivalent of being an untouchable. She was the girl whose pants size exceeded her age. Boys had walked behind her in the hall making oinking noises. Girls had slammed her into lockers or invited her to phantom social events.
Nerdy, poor, and dumpy. Three strikes and you’re out. The story of Katie Fisher’s adolescent life.
Just thinking about it got her annoyed at her mother all over again.
“I can’t believe you did that to me.” She cringed as her mother deftly sprinkled Day-Glo orange Velveeta on top of the casserole and slid it back into the oven. “No way am I going.”
Her mother clucked her tongue again. “Did what to you? You’ll have fun. You’ll get to see all your old friends.”
“And who would that be? Ronald McDonald?”
“I don’t know why you’re so hard on yourself, Katie. You’re a beautiful girl. You’re a successful professor of sociology.”
“Now,” Katie corrected. “I wasn’t then.”
“All the more reason to attend the reunion.”
So that was why her mother wanted her to go. She wanted her former loser of a daughter to go forth and gloat.
Maybe her mom was on to something here. Maybe it would be fun to walk into the reunion in her now svelte body and ramp up the va-va-voom, just to watch their jaws drop. Or to casually mention in conversation that she was now teaching at prestigious Fallowfield College in Vermont. Katie Fisher, the class of ‘96’s biggest loser, back in town in a big way. Vengeance is mine, sayeth Katie. But that wasn’t who she was. Nor was it why she was back in Didsbury.
She was on a yearlong paid sabbatical, working on a book about sports and male identity. She could have stayed in Fallowfield to write the book; most of her research and interviews were done. But there was her nephew.
“Where’s Tuck?” she asked her mother, who was now humming to herself as she set the table for dinner.
Her mother frowned. “Upstairs on that computer you bought him.”
“Mom, he needs the computer for school. Believe me.”
“His eyes are going to go bad, playing all those crazy games. He sits up there for hours.” Her mother shot her a look of mild disapproval. “It’s not good, Katie.”
Katie knew that look. Tuck was behaving the way Katie once had, hiding away in his room. Though Tuck was only nine, Katie knew he viewed his bedroom as his refuge, the one place where he could escape and not have to face the fact that his mother preferred a drink to him, and that no one knew who his father was, his mother included. Katie knew firsthand how painful being fatherless could be. She’d filled the void by turning to food, while her sister, Mina, had embraced booze and bad behavior instead. Katie wanted to make sure Tuck didn’t follow in her sister’s footsteps.
She almost said something to her mother about Mina screwing up Tuck but held her tongue, knowing it would only upset her. Plus, she had to give credit where it was due. Mina was trying to get her act together. She had entered a residential rehab facility six weeks before. And Mina did have the presence of mind to ask their mother to take in Tuck while she was away. Tuck loved his grandmother, and she loved him. But that didn’t mean she had the energy or the means to care for a moody little boy who had seen and heard things he shouldn’t have. Katie decided to spend her sabbatical year in Didsbury to help her mother take care of Tuck. She wanted Tuck to know there was another adult in his life, apart from his grandmother, upon whom he could always count.
Taking the last plate from her mother, Katie set it down on the table. “I’ll talk to Tuck if you want. Tell him to get out more, maybe join the Knights of Columbus or start playing golf.”
Her mother shot her another look, albeit an affectionate one. “Thank you, Miss Wiseacre. He loves you, you know. Thinks you’re the bee’s knees.”
“I think the same of him. And please don’t use expres-sions like ‘Bee’s knees’. It makes you sound like you’re ancient, which you’re not.”
“Tell that to my joints.” She gave Katie’s arm a quick squeeze before hustling back to the stove to check on the broccoli. “So, you’re going, then?”
“To talk to Tuck? I just said I was.”
“No, to the reunion.”
“Mom—”
“Promise me you’ll at least think about it, Katie.”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“It’s not. I just think it’ll be good for you, that’s all.”
“Mom, I hated high school. You know that. I would rather watch C-Span than deal with any of those people again.”
“But you’re different now, and I bet they are, too. Or some of them. Go.”
“I’ll think about it. But I’m not promising anything.”
“You’ll go,” her mother trilled confidently.
Katie just rolled her eyes.
The Blue Ridge Mountains which go through Tennessee
