Ever pick up a book because of cool cover art, read the inside flap and added it to your book bag, crawled onto your bed and read said book and then closed the covers after you’ve finished and asked “Why the bleep did I read this?”

Or is it just me? It can’t be just me…

This afternoon, a book with cover showing a retro siren in red beach togs with a slash of matching red lipstick lured it’s way into my stack of library books. I could blame the general awfulness of the day (unexpected mission critical car repairs for Mr Saturn that drained my NecronomiCon 2015 savings and a big chunk out of our personal checking accounts, headache from dealing with said car repairs, feelings of failure for not being able to pay for everything myself and having to ask Blacklight to pay his share, etc) for picking up Liza Klaussmann’s Tigers in Red Weather. I could blame PMS. I could blame my brain being addled by finding the brand new Margaret Atwood just sitting in the general fiction stacks unmarked as brand spanking new vs in New Fiction where it truly belonged. Or I could blame the Agent of the Random because sometimes books just aren’t awesome or the right book for a reader. I firmly believe every book has it’s reader and Great Tulu knows I’m not going to love every book.

I’m sure for the right person (IE not me) Tigers in Red Weather would be a treat. It’s the tale of two cousins, the darkly handsome Nick (a lady) and lush (in more ways than one if you get my meaning hic hic hic) Helena. Nick is rich, bored, and non traditional lovely with flashing green eyes. The men just love themselves some Nick. Helena is the lovely blonde cousin who feels second best from their childhood days on Martha’s Vineyard (her mother didn’t marry as well as Nick’s mother). We first meet the cousins in fall 1945 as they break up house (Nick to head south to her Navy husband, Helena to Hollywood and a second marriage). We then skip to the late 1950s, meet their children (Nick’s daughter Daisy and Helena’s son Ed), bad stuff goes down one magic summer and then we skip-a-doodle to through the 1960s, learn some secrets (I would have totally pegged Nick’s husband Hughes as a deeply closeted homosexual vs the true secret) and then the book mercifully ends.

I plugged along through everything, wanting to shake Nick and Helena by the shoulders until their brains rattled. I also pictured Helena’s son, the not quite “right” Ed as a budding Norman Bates. The most shocking and interesting thing about the book was turning to the author info and discovering Liza Klaussmann is descendant of Herman Melville. Does my loathing of Melville extend to his distant family? If so, is my love of Monica Dickens, descendant of the dreaded Charles Dickens an aberration? These questions compel me more than the fates of Nick and Helena, Ed and Daisy.

In the right hands, again NOT MINE,  I firmly believe someone will adore Tigers in Red Weather. I imagine the right reader (NOT ME) to be someone who loves Downtown Abbey, cupcakes, wines and Martha Stewart. I can totally see Jen Lancaster reading Tigers in Red Weather on her Kindle by the pool and loving it to death.

In these undead raccoon paws?Eh…but kudos to the fine marketing geniuses at the Hachette Book Group and jacket designer Lindsey Andrews because I would have never picked up this book if it wasn’t for the cover, not even if I found it at the Simsbury Public Library book sale on $8 bag day.