Play Book Tag discussion

"Good comes out of bad. All of the time..... Beauty and goodness can paint over hate and meanness, given half a chance." (Excerpt from Max the Madhatter's Notebook)

Tags/Shelves: Florida, Chocolate, Small Towns, Southern Living, Women's Fiction, LGBT, Alaska, Cruising

The small town of Chattahoochee, Florida has been home to the Florida State Mental Hospital for over a hundred years, and in the late 50s, Max the Madhatter was one of the residents who were allowed to leave the hospital on day passes. One of his favorite places to go was the shop run by Mr. D, where Mr D would always give him a chocolate bar - and his little daughter Hattie would treat Max like he was "just about anybody".

Decades later, Hattie returns to Chattahoochee after the death of her parents, inheriting the family home ... and Max the Madhatter's Notebook, filled with Max's thoughts and observations, drawings ... and recipes for chocolate icing, cake, souffle .. even chocolate pecan pie (this is the South :-)). Each chapter in this book starts with a few lines from that notebook.

The visit home is the impetuous for Hattie to start a new chapter in her life. She moves into her family home, opens a new business with her former teenage boyfriend / now gay best friend, Jake, using the Madhatter's recipes, and reconnects with her family (including her Aunt Piddie, who is a HOOT!).

I picked this book up because my mother worked for about a decade at the hospital in Chatahoochee. And although she didn't live in the town, she did - and still does - live in another small northern Florida town just down the road that has much in common with Chattahoochee. And I could relate to Hattie, who was essentially starting over in many respects at age forty.

This book wasn't perfect. Some events were foreshadowed too strongly, so that I found myself just wanting to "get to it already!". But I grew to love the characters in this book, and someday hope to read the rest of the books in this short series.

The one thing that I really would have like more of -- Max the Madhatter. We only get those few glimpses into his life. I wish the full notebook had been part of this novel also.