Friday, May 7, 2010

Ruby by Ann Hood

I've had this book on my shelf for quite some time, but I finally pulled it down to read for the Colorful Reading Challenge. I have to read 9 books with 9 different colors in the title this year, and Ruby is 1/9.

To summarize, Ruby is a pregnant teenage runaway. Olivia is a thirty-something milliner (a hat maker to us common folk) whose husband was recently killed in an accident. (I think I've been putting off reading it because I don't really like sad stories, unlike someone very near and dear to me!)

So...Olivia retreats from her NY apartment to her Rhode Island beach bungalow (I like it when people live in cool places in books. Even if it's not realistic! I feel like I get to live there too for awhile.).

I know you can't wait to read the book to find out how they meet so I'll tell you...they meet in Olivia's house after Ruby has broken in! And then Olivia decides she should adopt the baby when it's born and the broken down bungalow becomes a safe-ish haven for all 3.

But really it's not a sad story with a fairy tale or tragic ending. I got the feeling I was seeing how things might play out if that story actually happened out here in the real world.

It's only 225 pages, and I enjoyed it so much that I read it in one day during spring break. There are also several song references (especially The Beatles) so I made a corresponding playlist on my ipod. Those were the days.

And now in honor of Olivia the Milliner, a pretty cool hat in a drawing by Samuel Ribeyron:

2 comments:

Becca said...

Sounds like a pretty good book!

And don't worry. I just finished my first book for the challenge and I'm hosting it! lol

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Sounds like a good, quick read, thanks for the review. I like it when characters live in cool places, too! :)