The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise
Grade : A-

The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise is a character-driven, fun dramedy about an elderly woman who’s not ready to throw in the towel and a twenty-year-old who has no idea where her life is going.

Eighty-four-year-old Louise Wilt is elderly, but definitely not dead. She’s living happily independently when a slip and fall causes a broken hip and her cadre of children to decide that Louise needs a caretaker. Quick-witted Louise is in the mood to do anything but be babied – especially because a long-held secret is still looming over her head. But even the tough need to recuperate from surgery. So when Tanner Quimby shows up one day to take care of her, Louise chooses to benevolently ignore her.

Tanner is a twenty-year-old Northwestern college student with no direction in life after her collegiate soccer career died at the hands of dive off of a balcony during a party. Having dropped out of school after her scholarship dried up, she prefers privacy and video games to people. The job with Louise gives her the opportunity to start saving again, but soon she begins to get a little suspicious about the person whom she’s been hired to look after. There’s a shed she can’t touch – and a long-ago jewel heist which is piquing local interest again after years of dormancy. It turns out that Louise is in fact Patty – ringleader of a jewelry heist which has seen her wanted by the FBI for decades now. When Louise gets a phone call from her old friend, George, who is in deep with the mob, Louise offers Tanner a hefty bonus to leave town with her and drive her to California to save him. But along the way, Tanner and Louise discover sisterhood – and themselves.

This is head-to-toe fun on the bun. Louise is your typical crusty oldster and Tanner is the common clay who needs to be molded into something better by experience, Louise’s example, and the world at large. You know where this is going but the whole process is so fun and bouncy that it’s impossible to be too grinchy about it. Just let it take you down the highway and enjoy the ride.

That ride is fun, the personality conflict is great, and the road trip-ography great to track. I was deeply fond of Tanner by the end, but Louise I liked from the first page. Text-laden asides from Louise’s family, and getting to meet new folks along the way just simply iced an already delicious cake. The ending is perhaps the only part I’d change due to its predictability, but I was willing to let that little tiny faux pas slide.

This is about friendship that is grudging, and finding your very own happily ever after. The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise is ultimately worth its weight in diamonds.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible or your local bookshop

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Reviewed by Lisa Fernandes
Grade : A-
Book Type: Women's Fiction

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date : March 29, 2023

Publication Date: 03/2023

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Lisa Fernandes

Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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