From the publisher:
A woman learns to follow her own road in this heartwarming novel inspired by The Wizard of Oz by New York Times bestselling author Virginia Kantra.
Dorothy “Dee” Gale is searching for a place to belong. After their globe-trotting mother’s death, Dee and her sister Toni settled with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in Kansas, where Dee attends graduate school. But when Dee’s relationship with a faculty member, a bestselling novelist, ends in heartbreak and humiliation, she’s caught in a tornado of negative publicity. Unable to face her colleagues—or her former lover—Dee applies to the writing program at Trinity College Dublin.
Dee’s journey to Ireland leads her to new companions: seemingly brainless Sam Clery—who dropped out of college and now runs a newsagent’s shop—is charming and hot, in a dissolute, Irish poet kind of way; allegedly heartless Tim Woodman—who stiffly refused to take back his ex-fiancée—seems stuck in his past; and fiercely loyal Reeti Kaur, who longs for the courage to tell her parents she wants to teach underprivileged girls rather than work in the family business.
In a year of opportunities and changes, love and loss, Dee is mentored by powerful women in the writing program, challenging her to see herself and her work with new eyes. With her friends, Dee finds the confidence to confront her biggest fears—including her intimidating graduate advisor, who may not be so wicked after all.
Faced with a choice with far-reaching consequences, Dee must apply the lessons she’s learned along the way about making a family, finding a home…and recognizing the power that’s been inside her all along.
https://amzn.to/3pGajiK
Kantra branches out from her reimaginings of Little Women (Meg and Jo, Beth and Amy) to this modernization of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy “Dee” Gale was orphaned and taken in by her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in Kansas. She is in a graduate writing program, but when her boyfriend, a faculty member, publishes a bestselling novel with Dee thinly disguised as the heroine, she finds herself in a whirlwind of gossip and makes her escape to the Emerald Isle at Trinity College Dublin. There she makes new friends: Reeti, who is struggling to tell her traditional parents that she wants to be a teacher, not just a wife; Tim, their neighbor who had a bad breakup, causing him to retreat into himself and lock out the world; and Sam, a college dropout working in his family’s bodega, unable to commit to anyone or anything. Despite being intimidated by her grad school advisor, Dee grows as a writer and, in the process, realizes that she held the power to change all along.
Verdict: This charming update of a classic with a touch of romance should appeal to readers who enjoyed Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible or Cathleen Schine’s The Three Weissmanns of Westport.
©Library Journal, 2023
12/2023 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
THE FAIRYTALE LIFE OF DOROTHY GALE by Virginia Kantra. Berkley (December 5, 2023). ISBN: 978-0593547717. 384p.
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