Book Review: Leaning into the Curves by Nancy Anderson and Carroll Hofeling Morris

A novel about monkey wrenches and consequences, standing by your man and letting go of deep-seated fears, wielding weapons of sharp words and working things out with soft ones, renegotiations and letting in the light.

The back cover blurb says:

Molly is happy with her life the way it is, taking the classes she loves and performing with the Fiddling Finleys. But everything changes when her husband, Hank, retires. She's still trying to adjust to this new phase of her life when he brings home a Honda Gold Wing--even though he knows she hates motorcycles! Things go from bad to worse when he joins the Temple Riders Association, a "Mormon motorcycle gang" that combines road trips with temple work.

Faced with the prospect of being left behind when Hank rides with his new friends, Molly starts making some changes of her own.

~ ~ ~

Leaning into the Curves offers a delightful view of a little-known group of faithful Latter-day Saints. Full of appealing characters and unexpected turns, it gives a new twist to what life can be like after "a certain age"!

Since my experience with motorcycles can be summed up as riding on the back of an old boyfriend's cycle for about five minutes in my neighborhood and patching up a son's leg that got the hide peeled off from contact with a spinning ATV tire, it was interesting to learn more about a "gang" of Latter-day Saint riders. Although I am a woman of "a certain age," my involvement in middle-aged togetherness was with forced retirement due to, and dealing with my husband's terminal illness, so watching Molly and Hank work their way through adjusting not only to retirement, but to a new--and foreign--way of life, opened my eyes as much as it did Molly's.

The characters were crafted with deft hands, and the ups and downs of Molly's and Hank's lives were so, um, lifelike, that I thoroughly enjoyed Leaning into the Curves. I too have a Stay Out Room (although it's dubbed the Scary Room), so I was engaged from the very first page.

Nancy and Carroll are known as two-thirds of the authors of "The Company of Good Women" trilogy. This is their first duet novel. It is available at Deseret Book, both online and brick-and-mortar, and other LDS bookstores. Read Nancy and Carroll's blog, Crusty Old Broads, which they share with co-author Lael J. Littke.

I was provided with a copy of Leaning into the Curves by the publisher, Deseret Book. My opinion of the novel is entirely my own.