According to Jackie, "Summer doesn't really start until the latest Claire Cook book comes out." So, Happy Summer Everyone!

As a professional home stager, Sandy Sullivan is an expert at transforming cluttered rooms into attractive houses ready for sale. If only reinventing her life were as easy as choosing the perfect paint color. She's eager to put her family's suburban Boston home on the market, to downsize, and to simplify her own life. But she must first deal with her foot-dragging husband and her grown son, who has moved back home after college to inhabit the basement "bat cave."

After reading them the riot act, Sandy takes a job staging a boutique hotel in Atlanta recently acquired by her best friend's boyfriend. The good news is that she can spend time with her recently married daughter, Shannon, in Atlanta. The bad news is that Shannon finds herself heading to Boston for job training, leaving Sandy and her southern son-in-law, Chance, as reluctant roommates. If that's not complicated enough, Sandy begins to suspect that her best friend's boyfriend may be seeing another woman on the side.

Filled with characters who are fresh and original, yet recognizable enough to live in your neighborhood--plus plenty of great tips and tricks for fixing up houses, and lives--this is a wise and witty story of letting go and moving on. Best Staged Plans is Claire Cook at her most humorous and heartfelt.



Jackie says:
"Claire Cook is back with another gift for beach readers and book clubs everywhere--Best Staged Plans.  This is a fun romp involving a woman trying to get her nest emptied and sold so that she and her husband can start their next stage of life (whatever that may be).  Unfortunately, the son in the basement and the husband on the tennis court aren't really helping with the project.  Sandy is a professional home stager (the person who pretties up a home to help it sell), but she just can't get her own house in order.  So, when a big hotel job comes up for her in Atlanta, she's off on a plane, issuing ultimatum's to her husband about finishing the house while she's gone, or else.  She's looking forward to spending time with her newly married daughter in Atlanta--who in fact will be leaving for a month's training for her job, leaving Sandy awkwardly alone with her new son-in-law. The icing on the cake is her client for the hotel project is her best friends boyfriend--who seems to be cheating on her friend.  Mix in a homeless woman, a whole lot of shopping and several "assembled" meals and you'll find fun, heart and hilarity from cover to cover.  This is yet another winner for Cook, most certainly."