The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier

This is a fun read that will appeal to many women.  As the title suggests, our protagonist Joy Harkness is starting a new life, in Amherst, Massachusetts.  Joy is a loner, an accomplished college professor of a certain age who moves to a new town, buys an old wreck of a Victorian house, and begins to slowly open up her life and heart.  There is a Dickinsonian air about Joy, in that she is a  poetess who holds herself aloof from others, but that begins to change in myriad ways.  Enter Teddy, a genius remodeling contractor who begins to transform Joy's old house into a lovely home.  The author, Diane Meier, is a style guru, and the colorful descriptions of the home's new decor sprinkled throughout will make any woman's heart go pitter pat.  Don't we all want someone to come in and fix things for us?  Of course, the more people Joy lets into her life, the more complicated her life becomes, and therein lies the story.  Not an overly deep book, but funny and smart, and not prissy--this really is a good read that kept me turning pages when I should have been asleep.