Book Review: The Homecoming

Title: The Homecoming 

Author: Sienna Knight

Publisher: Sienna Knight

Quote: "Nice to know I was still a point of gossip, I supposed."

Growing up in a small town (presumably in Canada, though she doesn't say exactly where), Penelope didn't feel like the queen bee of high school even before she got drunk and left a party with the boy of her dreams. She doesn't remember exactly what happened. She thinks she may have "slept with" him, but what he remembers was more gossip-worthy than that. Penelope's mother made explicit porn videos in which she apparently had sex with lots of different men. During their drunken evening together they watched those videos. And Seb, although he liked Penelope and didn't consciously want to hurt her, was so shocked and thrilled that he shared this tidbit with everyone at school.

Is this the same mother who's grown old, fat, and prosperous so contentedly with the same old, fat father Penelope's come home to? Penelope tells us she doesn't look like either of them. Was she adopted? She doesn't say. She's too busy spelling out her emotions to be clear about the facts here. Do men grow old, fat, and prosperous with wives who prostitute themselves on live video? 

Or do they modify digital images so that it looks as if their faithful wives are doing all kinds of things ("I never knew your mother could bend that way," a schoolmate sweetly sneered to Penelope. Isn't that likely to mean that in real life she never did?) that never really happen? Did the couple amuse themselves by faking videos where they apparently did everything they could think of with anyone whose digital photo they fancied, and laugh all the way to the bank? That was certainly a fantasy many late baby boomers shared, though I never personally knew anyone who got rich with it.

Anyway Penelope is too mortified to explain these things. She just works diligently on reporting missing livestock and Girl Scout cookie sales for the small-town newspaper until she's promoted to reporting "bigger" stories and travelling to other small towns. (Penelope was fired from her job at a big city newspaper after complaining about office sexual harassment. She doesn't want to believe that there are men who want to prove themselves as decent as other men are sleazy, but she's working for one of them.) Will Seb prove himself worthy of a second chance, seeing as how she's liked him all these years anyway? Or will she meet someone else in the next small town?

What's not to like? There are too many novels called Homecoming already; both the one that grew into television's "Waltons" and the one that grew into the Tillerman Family Saga deserve to stay in print. A second edition titled Penelope's Homecoming could fix that. 

The actual novella certainly leaves a lot of the story to the reader's imagination. If that's your idea of what makes a short, sweet romance fun to read, this Homecoming may be for you.