Rating: 3 stars
Veronica Russo lives in Boothbay Harbour in Maine. She's a waitress at the local diner and also makes insanely delicious pies, that are very popular among the people in town. She even has pie-making classes. When she was sixteen, she got pregnant and had to give her baby up for adoption. She still feels as if some of the people she grew up with judge her for this, but is trying to get on with her life. She can't help but think about the baby girl she gave up, though, and hopes that some day the child may contact her.
Bea Crane is baby she gave up, but had no idea that she was adopted until a few weeks ago. A year after the death of her (adoptive) mother, she gets a letter that explains the truth about her origins. Bea is stunned. Recently graduated from college, and not all that happy with her life, she decides to take a chance, go to Boothbay Harbour and meet her biological mother.
Gemma Hendricks returns to Boothbay Harbour to visit old friends and to desperately try to decide what she wants to do with her future. She's an unemployed journalist, who's just discovered she is pregnant. While she's been happy living in New York City, her husband hates it and wants them to move to the little town where his parents ad siblings live. When she tells him about the baby, he's going to have even more ammunition for his plan to move them away from the city. While in Boothbay, she gets a temporary job writing a feature article about the young mother's home in town, where young girls who find themselves pregnant can find a safe haven until their babies are delivered.
All three women are united in their love of Colin Firth (because what woman in her right mind doesn't love the man and his varied film career), who coincidentally is coming to the town to film a movie. Veronica gets a job as an extra on the film set. Bea gets a date with one of the executive producers and Gemma hopes to be able to write a scoop about the film and perhaps get her career kick-started again.
Finding Colin Firth is not the best book to read when you're on a diet, trying to give up sugar and simple carbs. There are a LOT of descriptions of pies in it, because Veronica makes delectable and very popular ones. It probably also helps if you have at least a vague fondness for the actor Colin Firth and the many films he's done in his career, and over the course of the book, the main and supporting characters watch, think about or discuss a huge amount of the films he's been in. Strangely, the book didn't really make me want to watch anything with Colin Firth in it, but rather made me want to re-watch Waitress, the very sweet and underrated film with Keri Russell as a pie making diner waitress.
It's a nice, but not exactly mind-blowing book. All the characters seem nice, and I don't think I'd mind spending time with them if they were real. The book obviously deals with family, motherhood, identity, regret, doubts and insecurities. Boothbay seems like a pretty nice place to live, very picturesque. There are some romantic elements present in the book, but the most important relationships in the book are between women. I really wish I could allow myself to make and eat pies, but that would very much ruin my diet.
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