Given the candy-colored cover and the peek-a-boo picture of the heroine, one might be forgiven for thinking that Addition by Toni Jordan is another in a long line of similar chick lit novels. Certainly Addition has wit and humor but it's the appealingly quirky (some might say crazy) heroine that rules the pages. And that crazy adds depth in this Australian debut which I recently pulled off a shelf of older "to be read" books (yes I have shelves of books that are tbr, don't judge).
Grace Lisa Vandenburg (19 letters) has a compulsion to count. The behavior started when she was eight years old and has continued ever since. And up until recently she was maintaining quite happily. Sure Grace counted each step and each stroke of the hairbrush and each poppy seed on her cake, but she also had a job she liked - teaching grade schoolers - and she even dated from time to time. So what happened? How did she reach the point of being unemployed, on disability pay and considered to be nuts by her family and friends?
Interspersed with the history of Nikola Tesla (a man Grace admires and fantasizes about) is Grace's own story and her slowly coming to terms with who she is and how she got here. Along the way she meets Seamus Joseph O'Reilly (19 letters), finds a new place in her family and a new role in life.
This charming, bittersweet novel hit all the right notes. Guess I'll have to go on the hunt to see if I have any more of her titles in my tbr piles.