Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink
Magical cake charms play a role again in Gruenenfelder’s fun follow-up to There’s Cake in My Future (2011). The story is focused on Seema and Scott’s elaborate Indian American wedding extravaganza, but the protagonist is maid-of-honor Mel. At Seema’s wedding shower, Mel chooses the money-tree cake charm, which predicts great fortune, but it only underscores the rut she’s in as her friends’ lives change. Newly single and in limbo at work, she makes the impulsive decision to turn a wedding-weekend hookup with Seema’s brother Jay into a trip to Paris. Then, when she realizes Jay won’t ever give up his lothario lifestyle, she heads off to visit her best friend, Jeff, in Maui, where the laid-back lifestyle and gorgeous scenery rejuvenate her. A twist of fate, and a connection to that cake charm, just may bring her love at last. Gruenenfelder’s latest feel-good romantic comedy celebrates great friends, good drinks, and new beginnings. --Aleksandra Walker