Barbara Lloyd McMichael

“Haunting Jasmine” — Anjali Banerjee
Berkley — 296 pages — $15

“How I Planned Your Wedding”
— Susan Wiggs and Elizabeth Wiggs Maas
Harlequin — 230 pages — $21.95

Port Orchard author Anjali Banerjee’s writing always has been sensual — her stories are richly detailed with colors, textures, tastes and fragrances. “Haunting Jasmine” promises that readers will get more of the same.

 

Jasmine Mistry, the central character, is shell-shocked from her recent divorce. She’s taken some time off from her high-powered financial consulting job in Los Angeles to return to her family on Shelter Island in Puget Sound. She has agreed to run her beloved auntie’s bookstore there while the old lady returns to India for an extended stay.

 

Initially Jasmine plans to sleep at her parents’ house, but her auntie expects that she will live in the small apartment at the top of the old Victorian house in which the bookstore is housed. If she doesn’t, the aunt warns, “the house becomes cranky.”

 

Jasmine finds this out for herself after her aunt’s departure. Books mysteriously get rearranged or fall off shelves if she doesn’t spend enough time in the old house. And then the spirits of long-dead authors start appearing before her.

 

As Jasmine works to hold her aunt’s unusual business together, a handsome customer comes on strong to her. She finds him attractive, but is she risking being heartbroken again?

 

“Haunting Jasmine” is a literary ghost story, a gentle romance and an homage to the Bengali culture as transplanted to our region. It is a subtle and encouraging book.

 

And now for something completely different.

 

“How I Planned Your Wedding” is a collaboration by New York Times best-selling romance author and Bainbridge Island resident Susan Wiggs and her daughter Elizabeth Wiggs Maas.

 

This brash, true-life chronicle of planning for Elizabeth’s wedding day is Martha Stewart — NOT.

 

Some readers might be taken aback by what a full-blown production the Wiggs ladies made of this event — “a mountain of friggin’ insane wedding planning,” as Elizabeth describes it. But of course, an entire industry has grown up around bridal preparation, and mom and daughter seem to employ everyone by the time the wedding day rolls around.

 

The two might have a close-knit relationship but that doesn’t mean they see eye-to-eye — they describe their dual (and dueling) perspectives as they negotiate decisions regarding guest lists, invitations, attendants, venue, dress, flowers, catering, honeymoon and more. Oh, yes — and remembering to keep the bridegroom in the loop — thank goodness for instant messaging.

 

This book is candid to the point of being coarse. The bride cheerfully mentions topics that wouldn’t appear in most wedding etiquette books — unwanted body hair, bad complexion, losing extra pounds and all.  

 

This is howlingly funny stuff but it is not polite. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.