Today I am so excited to feature Fishing! by author Sarah Stonich. Her book is on tour with WOW! Women on Writing and people really love this book! And for the first time, I am excited to feature a guest reviewer! Fishing! will be reviewed by Romalyn Tilghman, author of To the Stars Through Difficulties.
So, before we get to Romalyn’s review, here is a little bit about the book, Fishing!:
Having fled the testosterone-soaked world of professional sport fishing, thirty-something RayAnne Dahl is navigating a new job as a consultant for the first all-women talk show about fishing on public television (or, as one viewer’s husband puts it, “Oprah in a boat”). After the host bails, RayAnne lands in front of the camera and out of her depth at the helm of the show. Is she up for the challenge? Meanwhile, her family proves as high-maintenance as her fixer-upper house and her clingy rescue dog. Her dad, star of the one-season Big Rick’s Bass Bonanza, is on his sixth wife and falling off the wagon and into RayAnne’s career path; her mother, a new-age aging coach for the menopausal rich, provides endless unwanted advice; and her beloved grandmother Dot—whose advice RayAnne needs—is far away and far from well. But as RayAnne says, “I’m a woman, I fish. Deal with it.”
And just when things seem to be coming together—the show is an unlikely hit; she receives the admiration of a handsome sponsor (out of bounds as he is, but definitely in the wings); ungainly house and dog are finally in hand—RayAnne’s world suddenly threatens to capsize, and she’s faced with a gut-wrenching situation and a heartbreaking decision.
First published in 2015 under a pseudonym, this first installment in a trilogy filled with hilarity and heartbreak unspools with the gentle wit and irresistible charm that readers of Sarah Stonich have come to expect. Fishing! eases us into unsuspected depths as it approaches the essential question . . . when should life be steered by the heart, not the rules?
Romalyn Tilghman’s review of Fishing!
Perhaps you CAN judge a book by its cover. I was drawn to the book by the freshness and quirkiness of the cover, and the writing lived up to it. Our protagonist, RayAnne Dahl, is the host of a public television show on women who fish, providing plenty to explore in the lives of her guests. It is the exploration of her own life and family that soon take center stage. RayAnne is quick and clever and observant. She is also presented with challenges of both love and heartache as she deals with her eccentric parents, the death of her grandmother to whom she’s devoted, and the attention of an off-limits guy. The settings of Minnesota and Florida are so deftly drawn that the reader cannot help but enjoy the ride, rooting for her every page of the way.
Fishing! is available to purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org. You can also add this book to your reading list over at GoodReads.
About the Author, Sarah Stonich
Sarah’s first novel, These Granite Islands was awarded a Loft McKnight Award and was a Barnes & Noble Great New Writers pick. That novel was translated into eleven languages. Her second, The Ice Chorus, was also widely translated and won several honors. Her memoir Shelter: Off The Grid In The Mostly Magnetic North won a Northeast Minnesota Book Award.
Sarah is best known for her Northern Trilogy, beginning with Vacationland, followed by Laurentian Divide, winner of the 2019 Minnesota Book Award and the NEMBA award, as well as being a 2019 National Reading Group Month selection by National Women’s Book Association. In March/April 2020, WPRI, Wisconsin Public Radio International’s longest running program, Chapter A Day chose Laurentian Divide to be read on air by Jim Flemming. That novel won the Minnesota Book Award, and along with
Vacationland, has been chosen as a community read in two dozen midwestern and Canadian cities including most recently in Willmar, Inver Grove Heights, Grand Forks, and Thunder Bay. She’s currently researching and writing Watershed, the final volume of the Northern Trilogy.
Fishing!,the first installment of her feminist chick-lit Fishing With RayAnne trilogy published by the University of Minnesota Press in March of 2020, is to be followed by Reeling in 2021. Sarah is currently working on Leaping and hopes to see it published in 2022. Sarah is adapting the trilogy to a television series, as well as writing original screenplays.
You can follow her online at:
Twitter: @sarahstonich
Instagram: sarahstonichwriter
