Set in a boarding school in Sonoma with rich kids and scholarship kids, this fiction reminds us of our own classes and classmates, and the small triumphs and hurts which made up young lives. Boredom and struggles, study, and success. ROOM AND BOARD await a dorm mother taking on the Vallejo girls’ dorm, who at times neglects her job. Former Manhattan publicist Gillian Brodie arrives back at the school she’d attended, but unfortunately despite some good times, her memories are not happy. Glen Ellen Academy has changed. Girls look up everyone on Google. Gillian catered to the wrong client in the “me too” controversy, unknowingly defending someone who didn’t have a reputation left to lose. She is part of the Twitter record, and her well-bred students can read every word. I found that it can be hard to keep track of whether it’s memory or present – if this was filmed it might be easier to understand using visual flashbacks. The school serves both boys and girls, but they are in separate dorms, and the atmosphere gets claustrophobic with the same staff at the same meals and talks. California wine country beckons. I really enjoyed seeing the area through Gillian’s eyes, while she rekindles a friendship with a local winemaker. At school her own friends were Miranda and handsome boy Aiden Lloyd; now Aiden has a winery, a pickup, and a daughter called Rainbow attending Glen Ellen. Other students include bright-eyed Bunny Winthrop and the shy twins with a musical flair, Farrah, and Freddy. I have my reservations about the way Gillian handles quite a lot of issues. But this is the first time she hasn’t been her own boss in many years, and she’s not used to being physically responsible for many young adults. Also notable is how people just drop Gillian once she is away from Manhattan. The story by Miriam Parker will interest and amuse many readers and remind us to take stock of what we have done with our lives since leaving school. While this standalone ROOM AND BOARD is not simply a romance, it will suit women better than men and has a definite romantic element.
Gillian thought she had everything she ever wanted—as a successful publicist running her own Manhattan firm and working with a high-profile-celebrity clientele, she finally made herself at home among the elite who eluded her throughout her youth. That is, until her career implodes, leaving her jobless, friendless, and with a googleable reputation that follows her everywhere. So, when she receives an offer to become a “dorm mom” at Glen Ellen Academy, the prestigious Sonoma boarding school she attended two decades earlier on scholarship, she leaps at the opportunity for a change of scene—at least until she can figure out how to rehabilitate her career.
But Gillian is surprised to find herself enjoying her new life: her role as a mentor is unexpectedly fulfilling, she finds a community, and most surprisingly of all she runs into an old flame from her own time at school, who is just as dashing now as he was then. However, just as she begins to feel comfortable, a scandal surfaces on campus that threatens to derail everything, and Gillian must figure out how to save her job, her students, her friends, and her new romance before it’s too late.
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