The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life, Sharon Pywell Affirm Press, $29.99

Sisters Lily and Neave take turns narrating this tale set in small-town USA after WWII. Lily opens with notes on Where I Am Now, which is dead. The story of how she got there unfolds through flashbacks. Lily is sassy and whip smart, except when it comes to men, who are drawn to her as moths to a flame, and she to them. Neave prefers books and baking. She draws lessons for life from the pages of a pirate romance with a swashbuckling heroine, whose action is interspersed with the sisters’ narration. Neave and Lily launch a party-plan make-up business (think Mary Kay or Avon) that’s wildly successful. Lily’s love life, however, spells disaster for both. Absorbing, funny and slightly mad, this a story to wrap yourself in on a quiet afternoon.