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Willow Row
Lizzie St. Claire has had just about all she can take. Her marriage ended on a sour note after her husband, the music professor, had a duet with a violinist half his age. Her beloved grandmother, Celeste, went and died on her without so much as a goodbye. And now she must face her family, and the emotional riptide they can churn out, in her hometown of Willow Row, South Carolina. Not only must Lizzie endure the fallout after the death of the family matriarch, but Celeste has graciously decided to haunt her. Her grandmother insists she can only rest in peace if Lizzie can find some peace of her own with The Family in the small town she once vowed to never call home again.
259 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 8, 2012
17 people want to read
About the author
Lisa Phillips
10 books43 followersLisa Phillips began writing at age nine, after reading The Secret Garden. Today she is a multi-published author of paranormal and contemporary romance, as well as mainstream women's fiction and nonfiction humor. As a life-long southerner, the traditions, charm and beauty of the South are consistent themes throughout all her novels.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 24, 2012
5*****Stars
Again, Ms Phillips has submitted for review a new Woman’s Romance so captivating, I could not put it down. It has lingered with me for days and still has me smiling and thinking about it. I have always felt I had not become the woman I am until my mid to late 30’s. It is unrealistic to think you are the same at the age of 25 as you are at 35. Many books are written for young romance. Lisa Phillips has wowed me with this story of Lizzie St. Claire coming back to Willow Row, S.C., the small town she left...couldn’t wait to leave, to bury her idol, her grandmother Celeste. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
I am a Northerner born and bread in NYC. The author had me drifting back in my memories finding differences but also some of the sameness, and I could relate.. Ms. Phillips brings us to a small town in the South, whose ideals are between the old and new. I found though, that even though there they had balmy nights and sultry days and we shoveled snow, families are still probably much the same.
Lizzie is the oldest of three children, She is a "St. Claire” which means a lot in Willow Row. She left to go to college, married an outsider, and is just newly divorced. Grandmother Celeste was the matriarch, and lived ‘in the big house’ where Lizzie found solace. Her Grandmother knew Lizzie felt she was a square peg in a round hole and cannot leave this earth without fixing this. Upon Lizzie’s return for the funeral, she meets up with the ghostly Celeste and we are drawn into Lizzie and her grandmothers wonderful “chats” and along with Lizzie we learn more about “the perfect” St. Claires of Willow Row.
Daddy is movie star handsome, an attorney with a philandering eye. Mommy is pretty, polished, well-dressed and part of the Woman’s Club set.Does she just look away from Daddy’s other activities??? Perfect, beautiful, younger sister Cassie was the Homecoming Queen at USC, has a perfect marriage, is a perfect wife, 2 perfect children; you get my drift. Can you be perfect forever??? Last but not least, brother Ashton, now 32, working in Daddy’s Law Firm, handsome like his Daddy and spoiled rotten. Ashton has been Lizzie’s since he was a toddler, they adore each other. He is to inherit the family business. What would happen if he fell in love with someone Daddy and Mommy, and polite society, didn’t approve of??? Grace is more than a housekeeper and cook. She and her granddaughter Julia give us the ‘inner circle’ but I couldn’t help laughing and thinking about ‘the 3 aunts’ that plagued this family just like my very similar 3 aunts that plagued mine. They were so full of themselves and their agendas, and the similarity was not missed by me.
Grandmother Celeste was a spitfire in her day, marrying ‘into’ the family and has an idea up her sleeve called Brady Ralston. He is a contractor she hired to work on her house when she got the news that she had only a short time left to live. Brady is living in the carriage house, and when Celeste pops in for her first chat with Lizzie...the story begins.
This is so the story of a woman coming into her own and finding herself. On this path, she has to look back, and as she does, she sees what she thought of herself then was not how others saw her. In doing so, she finally finds her worth now and boy does that have an effect on the other family members...Lizzie has found her groove.
Another interesting point I would like to make, is how our author makes us view the south, in all it’s glorious Gone With the Wind splendor. The manners, the cooking, the family, the smells coming from Grace's kitchen; fried tomatoes, moon pies and fried chicken. My little NYC self can only imagine this wonderful life-style with rolling meadows, whispering springs, beautiful balmy nights with the sounds of frogs and crickets, the small of lilacs and gardenias in the air.
Ms. Phillips has taken this one place, Willow Row, and woven an intricate story of love, pain, heartbreak, and strength and laugh out loud moments that I will not soon forget. I applaud her and it is a book EVERY WOMAN SHOULD READ.
5 Stars Lisa Phillips
Review by Gloria Lakritz
Sr Reviewer & Review Chairperson for the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Again, Ms Phillips has submitted for review a new Woman’s Romance so captivating, I could not put it down. It has lingered with me for days and still has me smiling and thinking about it. I have always felt I had not become the woman I am until my mid to late 30’s. It is unrealistic to think you are the same at the age of 25 as you are at 35. Many books are written for young romance. Lisa Phillips has wowed me with this story of Lizzie St. Claire coming back to Willow Row, S.C., the small town she left...couldn’t wait to leave, to bury her idol, her grandmother Celeste. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
I am a Northerner born and bread in NYC. The author had me drifting back in my memories finding differences but also some of the sameness, and I could relate.. Ms. Phillips brings us to a small town in the South, whose ideals are between the old and new. I found though, that even though there they had balmy nights and sultry days and we shoveled snow, families are still probably much the same.
Lizzie is the oldest of three children, She is a "St. Claire” which means a lot in Willow Row. She left to go to college, married an outsider, and is just newly divorced. Grandmother Celeste was the matriarch, and lived ‘in the big house’ where Lizzie found solace. Her Grandmother knew Lizzie felt she was a square peg in a round hole and cannot leave this earth without fixing this. Upon Lizzie’s return for the funeral, she meets up with the ghostly Celeste and we are drawn into Lizzie and her grandmothers wonderful “chats” and along with Lizzie we learn more about “the perfect” St. Claires of Willow Row.
Daddy is movie star handsome, an attorney with a philandering eye. Mommy is pretty, polished, well-dressed and part of the Woman’s Club set.Does she just look away from Daddy’s other activities??? Perfect, beautiful, younger sister Cassie was the Homecoming Queen at USC, has a perfect marriage, is a perfect wife, 2 perfect children; you get my drift. Can you be perfect forever??? Last but not least, brother Ashton, now 32, working in Daddy’s Law Firm, handsome like his Daddy and spoiled rotten. Ashton has been Lizzie’s since he was a toddler, they adore each other. He is to inherit the family business. What would happen if he fell in love with someone Daddy and Mommy, and polite society, didn’t approve of??? Grace is more than a housekeeper and cook. She and her granddaughter Julia give us the ‘inner circle’ but I couldn’t help laughing and thinking about ‘the 3 aunts’ that plagued this family just like my very similar 3 aunts that plagued mine. They were so full of themselves and their agendas, and the similarity was not missed by me.
Grandmother Celeste was a spitfire in her day, marrying ‘into’ the family and has an idea up her sleeve called Brady Ralston. He is a contractor she hired to work on her house when she got the news that she had only a short time left to live. Brady is living in the carriage house, and when Celeste pops in for her first chat with Lizzie...the story begins.
This is so the story of a woman coming into her own and finding herself. On this path, she has to look back, and as she does, she sees what she thought of herself then was not how others saw her. In doing so, she finally finds her worth now and boy does that have an effect on the other family members...Lizzie has found her groove.
Another interesting point I would like to make, is how our author makes us view the south, in all it’s glorious Gone With the Wind splendor. The manners, the cooking, the family, the smells coming from Grace's kitchen; fried tomatoes, moon pies and fried chicken. My little NYC self can only imagine this wonderful life-style with rolling meadows, whispering springs, beautiful balmy nights with the sounds of frogs and crickets, the small of lilacs and gardenias in the air.
Ms. Phillips has taken this one place, Willow Row, and woven an intricate story of love, pain, heartbreak, and strength and laugh out loud moments that I will not soon forget. I applaud her and it is a book EVERY WOMAN SHOULD READ.
5 Stars Lisa Phillips
Review by Gloria Lakritz
Sr Reviewer & Review Chairperson for the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
August 26, 2012
Elizabeth St. Claire grew up as one “The St. Claires” in the small South Carolina town of Willow Row, where the old south is not dead and there is no new money but old money. She hated it and couldn’t wait to get out, and she got out in a big way. Much to her daddy’s dismay, she went to The University of Tennessee, she married an outsider, moved to Atlanta and comes back to Willow Row only once or twice a year when she must.
Now, a divorced woman, she returns to Willow Row to attend the funeral of one of only two people there that she can truly say she misses, her grandmother Celeste. Celeste was the grand dame of the family, she lived in “the big house” and really didn’t care much for the elite of Willow Row. She adored Lizzie, and she and her home were Lizzie’s refuge. Little does Lizzie know but Celeste has one more trick up her sleeve and even from the grave, the irrepressible old gal will not go quietly into the good night, not Celeste, she is going to stir the pot up good and enjoy every moment of the results from where ever she is.
Ms. Phillips takes the reader to the Old South that most don’t know still exists, a world of good manners, soft spoken women with a spine of steel, men who open doors, a place where no matter how old you get you still call your parents mama and daddy. A land of hot days and lazy nights and underneath it all the stuff of soap operas. This is not the south of the Housewives of Atlanta; no this is the south reminiscent of The Long Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Being a southerner, this is the south I grew up in, and Ms. Phillips has captured that long lost south perfectly. Lizzie and her family are like most families of the old south, to the public eye they are perfect, but behind those closed doors of their perfect homes, they are one big dysfunctional mess.
Lizzie is the oldest of three children, she writes children’s books and doesn’t think she lives up to the family standards. In actuality, she is the rock of the family. Grandmother Celeste knew this, and decided the only way Lizzie was ever going to come into her own was to give her a little boost. Too bad she had to die to do it.
Lizzie’s mama is 65 years old, sleek and polished, always dressed properly and thanks to Marcie at the Snip N Curl, never a hair out of place; she has to have a drink now and again to get through the days. Daddy looks like a young Gary Cooper, he owns a prosperous law firm and to Lizzie is “her knight in shining armor with a white horse parked at another woman’s door”.
Sister Cassie was homecoming queen at USC, perfect wife and perfect mother to two perfect children, she and Lizzie couldn’t be more different. Brother Ashton, at 32 years old, is a partner in Daddy’s law firm, well built and good looking he’s spoiled rotten and stole Lizzie’s heart as a toddler. He is the other person in Willow Row Lizzie feels is hers.
Their household is rounded out with Grace, she was one of Celeste’s strays and raised Daddy, after his marriage, she moved in with them to help raise Lizzie and her siblings, and basically run the house. Other than the family, we will get to know Julia, Grace’s granddaughter who works in Daddy’s law firm as well, and was raised as a member of the family with the St. Claire children.
And then there is Celeste’s ace in the hole, Brady Ralston. He’s a contractor she hired to work on her house, and if Celeste has her way, he will be much more than that to Lizzie. What a wonderful group of people Ms. Phillips has given us to meet and enjoy, all with their little hidden secrets, all so deliciously southern and wrong. I loved each and every one of them.
This book is chock full of southernisms, trust me when I say it is spot on and felt like home to me. Yes, we call all soft drinks coke (even if they are 7up) except if we are eating a moon pie – then you have an RC Cola. After Lizzie had settled back in, she ran around in cotton dresses with her shoes off and her hair down. As I write this review, I’m sitting with my shoes off, in a sundress which is the uniform of any southern lady worth her salt and still smiling over my visit with Lizzie and the Family. You don’t have to be southern to enjoy this book. This is a story of one woman’s coming into her own and the world she lives in, warts and all.
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Dual Review Team
Now, a divorced woman, she returns to Willow Row to attend the funeral of one of only two people there that she can truly say she misses, her grandmother Celeste. Celeste was the grand dame of the family, she lived in “the big house” and really didn’t care much for the elite of Willow Row. She adored Lizzie, and she and her home were Lizzie’s refuge. Little does Lizzie know but Celeste has one more trick up her sleeve and even from the grave, the irrepressible old gal will not go quietly into the good night, not Celeste, she is going to stir the pot up good and enjoy every moment of the results from where ever she is.
Ms. Phillips takes the reader to the Old South that most don’t know still exists, a world of good manners, soft spoken women with a spine of steel, men who open doors, a place where no matter how old you get you still call your parents mama and daddy. A land of hot days and lazy nights and underneath it all the stuff of soap operas. This is not the south of the Housewives of Atlanta; no this is the south reminiscent of The Long Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Being a southerner, this is the south I grew up in, and Ms. Phillips has captured that long lost south perfectly. Lizzie and her family are like most families of the old south, to the public eye they are perfect, but behind those closed doors of their perfect homes, they are one big dysfunctional mess.
Lizzie is the oldest of three children, she writes children’s books and doesn’t think she lives up to the family standards. In actuality, she is the rock of the family. Grandmother Celeste knew this, and decided the only way Lizzie was ever going to come into her own was to give her a little boost. Too bad she had to die to do it.
Lizzie’s mama is 65 years old, sleek and polished, always dressed properly and thanks to Marcie at the Snip N Curl, never a hair out of place; she has to have a drink now and again to get through the days. Daddy looks like a young Gary Cooper, he owns a prosperous law firm and to Lizzie is “her knight in shining armor with a white horse parked at another woman’s door”.
Sister Cassie was homecoming queen at USC, perfect wife and perfect mother to two perfect children, she and Lizzie couldn’t be more different. Brother Ashton, at 32 years old, is a partner in Daddy’s law firm, well built and good looking he’s spoiled rotten and stole Lizzie’s heart as a toddler. He is the other person in Willow Row Lizzie feels is hers.
Their household is rounded out with Grace, she was one of Celeste’s strays and raised Daddy, after his marriage, she moved in with them to help raise Lizzie and her siblings, and basically run the house. Other than the family, we will get to know Julia, Grace’s granddaughter who works in Daddy’s law firm as well, and was raised as a member of the family with the St. Claire children.
And then there is Celeste’s ace in the hole, Brady Ralston. He’s a contractor she hired to work on her house, and if Celeste has her way, he will be much more than that to Lizzie. What a wonderful group of people Ms. Phillips has given us to meet and enjoy, all with their little hidden secrets, all so deliciously southern and wrong. I loved each and every one of them.
This book is chock full of southernisms, trust me when I say it is spot on and felt like home to me. Yes, we call all soft drinks coke (even if they are 7up) except if we are eating a moon pie – then you have an RC Cola. After Lizzie had settled back in, she ran around in cotton dresses with her shoes off and her hair down. As I write this review, I’m sitting with my shoes off, in a sundress which is the uniform of any southern lady worth her salt and still smiling over my visit with Lizzie and the Family. You don’t have to be southern to enjoy this book. This is a story of one woman’s coming into her own and the world she lives in, warts and all.
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Dual Review Team
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews