Jennifer chose The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff for our last book club, and everyone who read it loved it! The book centers around a fictional town named Templeton, based on real-life Cooperstown, NY (of James Fenimore Cooper and baseball fame). The main character is Willie Upton, living in present-day, and her research into the lives of her ancestors, back to the town's founder, Marmaduke Temple. The book goes back and forth between the past and present in each chapter, and all of the ancestors get their turn to tell their story. The author puts handy family tree charts at the end of each of Willie's chapters so you can keep track of who's who.
The book is an interesting mix of magic and reality, as one of the main characters of the book is a monster who lives in the town lake. There are also ghosts, visions, and other mysterious happenings, but the author treats them almost as everyday and accepted occurrences. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book--the cross between the mundane and the fantastic. I also immensely enjoyed all of the characters in Monsters of Templeton. Each character had major flaws, but that made them more true and real. No one is perfect in this book.
Lauren Groff is a great story-teller, and this is one of those books that you don't want to end. My favorite section of the book is the Charlotte and Cinnamon letters--you'll have to read it to find out what these are! I hope Lauren Groff is working on another book--I would like to read it!
