Ridge’s deafness doesn’t impede their relationship or their music. She finds out after the fact that Ridge already has a long-distance girlfriend, Maggie-and that he's deaf. The two begin a songwriting partnership that grows into something more once Sydney dumps Hunter and decides to crash with Ridge and his two roommates while she gets back on her feet. While music student Sydney is watching her neighbor Ridge play guitar on his balcony across the courtyard, Ridge is watching Sydney’s boyfriend, Hunter, secretly make out with her best friend on her balcony.

Hoover is a master at writing scenes from dual perspectives. Sydney and Ridge make beautiful music together in a love triangle written by Hoover ( Losing Hope, 2013, etc.), with a link to a digital soundtrack by American Idol contestant Griffin Peterson. Robinson’s fiction debut is a good beach read for those who like to reflect on the complexity and messiness of family relationships. When Juliet finds the answer to her question about love, it leads her to make tough decisions about the course of her life. There are relationship twists aplenty: relationships rearranged and reassessed, relationships that grow and others that die, and brand new relationships to explore. Thankfully, about a third of the way through, a series of small revelations lifts the book out of its potential slide into predictability. Thus begins what at first appears to be a typical mending-a-mother/daughter-relationship story. Desiree hasn’t changed, and the pair resume bickering as if Juliet hadn’t lived away for decades. She leaves her freewheeling artist’s life in Mexico for a Massachusetts winter with her self-centered, demanding, theatrical mother. But she loves her brother, and his lawyerly persuasion prevails. Juliet is in the throes of a divorce she didn’t want, and she’s pregnant, to boot-although not by her soon-to-be ex-and doesn’t much like her mother anyway. Those are the questions 40-year-old Juliet Clark faces when she gets a call from her brother asking her to return home to care for their aging mother, who is recovering from a broken hip. To love or not to love, and how? And just exactly what is love, anyway?

The Wishing Hill by Holly Robinson