Her romantic history is long and undistinguished, veritably littered with the horrific and the inappropriate. It's to do with the fact that she's staggeringly unlucky in love. Maggie Beaumont's life leaves something to be desired. But having the dog front and center on the cover still kind of puts me off (and I'm a huge dog person). He's central to the story in a good way, organically a part of Maggie's life and not a distraction from the heart of the story. I get that each of her books has a dog in it, and this one is probably even my favorite pup. I'm delighted it's been reissued, as the dog cover wasn't doing it for me. Together these three make up my Kristan Higgins Holy Triumverate, if you will. Then I read Catch of the Day and it shot immediately to the top of my faves (along with All I Ever Wantedand Until There Was You). The rest were like frosting, delectable, fluffy, always-welcome treats.

I had already read a handful of her books before finding Catch of the Day, and I sort of thought I had her style figured out, you know? The first two I read remained strong favorites. Catch of the Daywas originally published in 2007 and was Higgins' second book. I also made time to re-read one of my favorite Kristan Higgins books on account of it being repackaged and re-released this week in a glossy new edition to match her others. So I may have been forgoing some of the new stuff in favor of doing a little re-reading a la Megan Whalen Turner these days. And while my reading hasn't slowed down, I tend to hibernate with an old favorite when real life gets real. Quite honestly, life is abundantly busy these days. I felt like something light today for this edition of Retro Friday.

Catch of the day by kristan higgins