Manufactured pleasure

Phaedra Patrick plots always seem manufactured, rather than flowing like something than might happen naturally in the real world, yet that is not to say her novels do not provide pleasurable reading. So it is with her 2017 book Rise & Shine Benedict Stone.

Benedict Stone, 44 years old, operates a village jewelry shop in England and doesn't seem to mind that he has few customers. It just gives him more time to mope about the departure of Estelle, his wife of 10 years, who has left him and moved in with a friend.

Then a vaguely familiar teenage girl shows up at his door. She is Gemma, 16-year-old daughter of Benedict's estranged brother, who moved to America years before. If Benedict thinks he has problems, Gemma's are worse. Feeling unloved after her mother left and her father diverted all his attention to a new woman, the girl has run away to England and the only relative she knows about.

Benedict, whose endless pining for a child is one reason Estelle left him, finds in Gemma the child he has yearned for. In her uncle, Gemma finds a loving father figure. Together they set about solving each other's problems. She turns out to have a gift for knowing the perfect gemstone for customers at that particular point of their lives, and she awakens Benedict's creativity in making jewelry. She also takes over Benedict's campaign to win back Estelle.

Meanwhile her uncle takes steps to reunite Gemma with her father, made difficult because that means reuniting with his brother himself. And that means facing up to the act that caused his brother to break contact with him so many years before.

So yes, this does seem as fake as costume jewelry, all a little too neat, but as with The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper and The Library of Lost and Found, the novel is a joy to read.