ORANGE MINT AND HONEY

When the ghost of jazz legend Nina Simone is your spiritual advisor, how bad can life get? Pretty bad, Shay Dixon finds out, because that ghost is her only friend. She moves in with her mother, a reformed alcoholic, when her graduate advisor prescribes a semester's break. Thus begins Carleen Brice's quirky novel about forgiveness and redemption. Cherise Boothe's youthful voice is perfect for the novel's heroine and her 40-year-old mother. The dialogue is peppered with enough self-help platitudes and caustic asides to make this production crackle with good humor. Boothe maintains a lively tone that is equally effective for the angry young woman and her mother, who has been dubbed as "the chocolate Martha Stewart." P.R. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2009]