With the Holidays and then getting back into the swing of things, we missed meeting in January for our little book club. Unfortunately we had also missed December, for the same reasons. We were trying to get the guys to come with us in December to go to dinner and a movie and go see the Hobbit, but it never ended up working out with everyone's schedules.
We finally got to meet in early February to talk about our latest book and enjoy another great dinner. We try to pick a cuisine that goes with the book, whenever possible but sometimes there's no 'theme' to go along with the book, in that case we just pick a small local joint (our only rule is no chain food restaurants). For this dinner we ended up at La Havana 59, a small Cuban restaurant. Well I must say, sometimes the local hidden gems are the best, because that's exactly what this place was.
Nicole and I ate at the bar and had a fabulous dinner from start to finish. Starting with the mojito's, which I don't even like rum, they were delicious cocktails. We had a passion fruit mojito which was awesome, and it was something ridiculous like $5 or even cheaper. Let me tell you it was $5 well spent. We also got some appetizers to start off with which included some fried plantain chips with garlic sauce, they were so good, again for only like $3.50! And we had some delicious empanadas with them as well, no joke they were only $2.50, what a bargin. If that wasn't enough we had the most delicious roja vieja for dinner with a huge mound of white rice, yea that was only $8.50. I think we ended up paying like $20 each with tip for a delicious meal, this is exactly why we go searching for those local gems, we're already talking about going back again for when Joanna can come with us.
The book was good too :-) Another gem if you will, that I probably never would have found. Joanna and Nicole both have cats so this book was perfect, but even as a dog lover I still appreciated the story being told from the perspective of the cat. It really was cute, but especially perfect for any cat lover out there!
Book Summary (From Amazon): Humans best understand the truth of things if they come at it indirectly. Like how sometimes the best way to catch a mouse that’s right in front of you is to back up before you pounce. So notes Prudence, the irresistible brown tabby at the center of Gwen Cooper’s tender, joyful, utterly unforgettable novel, which is mostly told through the eyes of this curious (and occasionally cranky) feline.
When five-week-old Prudence meets a woman named Sarah in a deserted construction site on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, she knows she’s found the human she was meant to adopt. For three years their lives are filled with laughter, tuna, catnaps, music, and the unchanging routines Prudence craves. Then one day Sarah doesn’t come home. From Prudence’s perch on the windowsill she sees Laura, the daughter who hardly ever comes to visit Sarah, arrive with her new husband. They’re carrying boxes. Before they even get to the front door, Prudence realizes that her life has changed forever.
Suddenly Prudence finds herself living in a strange apartment with humans she barely knows. It could take years to train them in the feline courtesies and customs (for example, a cat should always be fed before the humans, and at the same exact time every day) that Sarah understood so well. Prudence clings to the hope that Sarah will come back for her while Laura, a rising young corporate attorney, tries to push away memories of her mother and the tumultuous childhood spent in her mother’s dusty downtown record store. But the secret joys, past hurts, and life-changing moments that make every mother-daughter relationship special will come to the surface. With Prudence’s help Laura will learn that the past, like a mother’s love, never dies.
Poignant, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny in the ways only a cat can be, Love Saves the Day is a story of hope, healing, and how the love of an animal can make all of us better humans. It’s the story of a mother and daughter divided by the turmoil of bohemian New York, and the opinionated, irrepressible feline who will become the bridge between them. It’s a novel for anyone who’s ever lost a loved one, wondered what their cat was really thinking, or fallen asleep with a purring feline nestled in their arms. Prudence, a cat like no other, is sure to steal your heart.
Book Review: The book was so much more than I was originally expecting being told from the perspective of a cat. It worked into the story so perfectly but it was also the story of human bonds, about a mother and a daughter and what they went through, which was based on a true story. That part of the story alone was heartbreaking and upsetting to read about that this actually happened (I don't want to give away too much). Yes the parts told from the perspective of the cat were also cute, like the monster, I mean the vacuum that comes out to get her. This was a really cute book that I would def recommend to even the non cat lovers out there!
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