Nowhere but Home by Liza Palmer

Nowhere but Home by Liza Palmer is an uplifting coming of age story that shows you can in fact go home, and sometimes that is the only place to go. This is a truly character driven story that will have the reader relating to the characters and cheering them on along the way.

Book Description

“The strategy on the gridiron of Friday Night Lights is nothing compared to the savagery of coming home.

Queenie Wake has just been fired from her job as a chef for not allowing a customer to use ketchup . . . again. Now the only place she has to go is North Star, Texas, the hometown she left in disgrace. Maybe things will be different this time around. After all, her mother—notorious for stealing your man, your car, and your rent money—has been dead for years. And Queenie's sister, once the local teenage harlot who fooled around with the town golden boy, is now the mother of the high school football captain.

Queenie's new job, cooking last meals at the nearby prison, is going well . . . at least the inmates don't complain! But apparently small-town Texas has a long memory for bad reputations. And when Queenie bumps into Everett Coburn, the high school sweetheart who broke her heart, she wishes her own memory was a little spottier. But before Queenie takes another chance on love, she'll have to take an even bigger risk: finding a place to call home once and for all.” – Nowhere but Home

My Thoughts

Nowhere but Home is a fun read about how going home is never quite like what you expect it to be. After being fired from her job in Manhattan (where everyone wants to go to make it big and get away from small cities), Queenie must return home to her hometown in Texas. Not only does she not have a fabulous job as a chef anymore, now she is serving meals at a prison. Quite a drastic difference!

Not only is her job different, but she soon realizes that the people she left behind are there, but different, too. On a quest to find herself and place in life, Queenie finally beings to realize that maybe her hometown was where she belonged after all.

Liza Palmer writes with a witty wisdom that is truly captivating for the reader to be drawn in to reading. If you plan on just reading a few chapters, be prepared to stay for much longer. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good summer novel to read.

* Thank you to the publisher of Nowhere but Home, William Morrow, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.