It’s always a special experience to read a story set in a familiar location. The Optimist’s Guide to Letting Go takes place in Milwaukee and Wauwatosa and features mentions of well-known spots, including Kopp’s and Polish Fest. It also smiled at the brief mention of cider from Door County–a slight nod to another story from Amy E. Reichert.

The Optimist’s Guide to Letting Go did not immediately sweep me away. Rather, I found the story to be quietly insistent, wrapping me up with each detail and luring me to read further and unravel the secrets in each woman’s story line. I liked the way Amy Reichert wove together the lives and experiences of three generations of women. There is a lot of love between those women and the reader can feel that love on every page. A moving and memorable read.

About the Book
Three generations. Seven days. One big secret. The author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake unfolds a mother-daughter story told by three women whose time to reckon with a life-altering secret is running out.

Gina Zoberski wants to make it through one day without her fastidious mother, Lorraine, cataloguing all her faults, and her sullen teenage daughter, May, snubbing her. Too bad there’s no chance of that. Her relentlessly sunny disposition annoys them both, no matter how hard she tries. Instead, Gina finds order and comfort in obsessive list-making and her work at Grilled G’s, the gourmet grilled cheese food truck built by her late husband.

But when Lorraine suffers a sudden stroke, Gina stumbles upon a family secret Lorraine’s kept hidden for forty years. In the face of her mother’s failing health and her daughter’s rebellion, this optimist might find that piecing together the truth is the push she needs to let go…

About the Author
Amy Reichert earned her MA in Literature from Marquette University, and honed her writing and editing skills as a technical writer (which is exactly as exciting as it sounds). As a newly minted member of the local library board, she loves helping readers find new books to love. She’s a life-long Wisconsin resident with (allegedly) a very noticeable accent, a patient husband, and two too-smart-for-their-own-good kids. When time allows, she loves to read, collect more cookbooks than she could possibly use, and test the limits of her DVR.