Recipe for a Happy Life - Brenda Janowitz (2013)

After an unfortunate incident with her musician boyfriend Jaime, Hannah takes leave from her Manhattan law firm (where it now looks like she's not going to make partner) to head off to the Hamptons to spend the summer with her grandmother. Her grandmother is a widow six times over and has been the closest thing to a mother Hannah has had. Hannah is hoping she will be able to learn from her the recipe for not only getting her life back on track but making it a happier one too. These characters - particularly the larger-than-life grandmother - will instantly hook you into this engrossing story. All in all, it's a very accomplished effort which will tug on the heartstrings.

There's more than one recipe for a happy life in Brenda Janowitz's latest novel, Recipe for a Happy Life. The summary says: "Hannah Goodman doesn't grow up like most kids on the Upper East side. Her mother, Gray, is an award-winning photojournalist with little time for the banalities of child-rearing, and when she's not jetting off to follow the latest scoop, she's camped out at the Hotel Chelsea. The closest thing Hannah's got to a traditional matriarch is her grandmother - a glamorous widow six times over with a sprawling Hampton's estate. But Gray is determined that her daughter resist the siren song of the trust fund set, and make her own way in the world. So Hannah does just that - becoming a successful lawyer in New York City, and dating a handsome musician. Hannah has it all, or so it seems, until one hot June day the carefully constructed pieces of her life break apart. When she throws it all in and seeks solace at her grandmother's estate, she discovers that where happiness is concerned, you don't have to stick to the recipe." Recipe for a Happy Life is out in July 2013. Head to the publisher's website for an excerpt of Chapter One.

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