Genre Fiction
![Kristan Higgins - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_kristan_higgins.jpg)
Out of the Clear Blue Sky
From New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins comes a funny and surprising new novel about losing it all-and getting back more than you ever expected.
Lillie Silva knew life as an empty nester would be hard after her only child left for college, but when her husband abruptly dumps her for another woman just as her son leaves, her world comes crashing down. Besides the fact that this announcement is a complete surprise (to say the least), what shocks Lillie most is that she isn't heartbroken. She's furious.
Lillie has loved her life on Cape Cod, but as a mother, wife, and nurse-midwife, she's used to caring for other people . . . not taking care of herself. Now, alone for the first time in her life, she finds herself going a little rogue. Is it over the top to crash her ex-husband's wedding dressed like the angel of death? Sure! Should she release a skunk into his perfect new home? Probably not! But it beats staying home and moping.
She finds an unexpected ally in her glamorous sister, with whom she's had a tense relationship all these years. And an unexpected babysitter in, of all people, Ben Hallowell, the driver in a car accident that nearly killed Lillie twenty years ago. And then there's Ophelia, her ex-husband's oddly lost niece, who could really use a friend.
It's the end of Lillie's life as she knew it. But sometimes the perfect next chapter surprises you . . . out of the clear blue sky.
Lillie Silva knew life as an empty nester would be hard after her only child left for college, but when her husband abruptly dumps her for another woman just as her son leaves, her world comes crashing down. Besides the fact that this announcement is a complete surprise (to say the least), what shocks Lillie most is that she isn't heartbroken. She's furious.
Lillie has loved her life on Cape Cod, but as a mother, wife, and nurse-midwife, she's used to caring for other people . . . not taking care of herself. Now, alone for the first time in her life, she finds herself going a little rogue. Is it over the top to crash her ex-husband's wedding dressed like the angel of death? Sure! Should she release a skunk into his perfect new home? Probably not! But it beats staying home and moping.
She finds an unexpected ally in her glamorous sister, with whom she's had a tense relationship all these years. And an unexpected babysitter in, of all people, Ben Hallowell, the driver in a car accident that nearly killed Lillie twenty years ago. And then there's Ophelia, her ex-husband's oddly lost niece, who could really use a friend.
It's the end of Lillie's life as she knew it. But sometimes the perfect next chapter surprises you . . . out of the clear blue sky.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Out of the Clear Blue Sky
"The perfect beach read. Out of the Clear Blue Sky provides the kind of heart-warming tale of hard-fought growth, crazy family and welcoming community that will linger with you long after the final page."-#1 NYT bestselling author Lisa Gardner
"Reading a Kristan Higgins novel is like spending time with a dear friend, one who understands your soul, captivates your senses...and every now and then makes you snort with laughter. Higgins never disappoints! If you're looking for a novel brimming with heart and humor, look no further than Out of the Clear Blue Sky. Each time I opened this book, it felt like reuniting with a dear friend. With her trademark wit, Higgins' tackles tough issues, and does so with sensitivity and heart. Out of the Clear Blue Sky is everything I love in women's fiction-smart, hilarious, and brimming with heart and hope."-Lori Nelson Spielman, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
"Your big summer read has arrived! Book after book, Kristan Higgins is a can't-miss author who always serves up stories that are fresh, relevant, and deeply involving."-Susan Wiggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"From the first page, I was deeply invested in Lillie's plight and desperate to keep turning pages. Kristin Higgins nails it with this laugh-oud-loud, pitch-perfect, heartfelt novel about a woman's life upended and the unexpected ways she finds her way forward. Full of hope, positive messages and humor, Out of the Clear Blue Sky is the perfect book for summer, or anytime!"-Elyssa Friedland, author of Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
"A fantastic journey with a brave, delightful and mischievous heroine who will keep you laughing and rooting for her from page one. I did not want this book to end!"-Jane L. Rosen, author of Eliza Starts a Rumor
"With a blend of humor and poignancy reminiscent of Nora Ephron's Heartburn…. [Out of the Clear Blue Sky is] a beautifully told blend of grief, hope, and humor that showcases Higgins at her best."-Kirkus...
"The perfect beach read. Out of the Clear Blue Sky provides the kind of heart-warming tale of hard-fought growth, crazy family and welcoming community that will linger with you long after the final page."-#1 NYT bestselling author Lisa Gardner
"Reading a Kristan Higgins novel is like spending time with a dear friend, one who understands your soul, captivates your senses...and every now and then makes you snort with laughter. Higgins never disappoints! If you're looking for a novel brimming with heart and humor, look no further than Out of the Clear Blue Sky. Each time I opened this book, it felt like reuniting with a dear friend. With her trademark wit, Higgins' tackles tough issues, and does so with sensitivity and heart. Out of the Clear Blue Sky is everything I love in women's fiction-smart, hilarious, and brimming with heart and hope."-Lori Nelson Spielman, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
"Your big summer read has arrived! Book after book, Kristan Higgins is a can't-miss author who always serves up stories that are fresh, relevant, and deeply involving."-Susan Wiggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"From the first page, I was deeply invested in Lillie's plight and desperate to keep turning pages. Kristin Higgins nails it with this laugh-oud-loud, pitch-perfect, heartfelt novel about a woman's life upended and the unexpected ways she finds her way forward. Full of hope, positive messages and humor, Out of the Clear Blue Sky is the perfect book for summer, or anytime!"-Elyssa Friedland, author of Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
"A fantastic journey with a brave, delightful and mischievous heroine who will keep you laughing and rooting for her from page one. I did not want this book to end!"-Jane L. Rosen, author of Eliza Starts a Rumor
"With a blend of humor and poignancy reminiscent of Nora Ephron's Heartburn…. [Out of the Clear Blue Sky is] a beautifully told blend of grief, hope, and humor that showcases Higgins at her best."-Kirkus...
Readers Top Reviews
R. MooreElisabett
Out of the Clear Blue Sky was wonderful. Heartwarming, funny, sad, it had all the feels. I wanted to hate Melissa, but I couldn’t. Higgins is a master at creating characters you love and cheer for and wish they were your friends!
ladybugs8453R. Mo
If you are looking for a story that makes you laugh out loud this is the 1 for you. It has it all. Pompous philandering Husband crunchy earth mother scorned wife and conniving money grubbing mistress. But all is not lost and it is a journey you will want to take with them Laugh out loud out loud comments Make this a must read it. I have always loved Kristan Higgins but I think this is my favorite yeah. Enjoy enjaami
Bookseekerladybug
Kristen Higgins writes utterly vivid characters. In this case, Lilly, our protagonist is a wise earth mother midwife who temporarily turns into a wicked prankster when her husband of nineteen years decides to “find joy” with a much younger woman as their son heads off to collage. Is it surprising that Lilly goes a little mad when her husband starts planning his wedding before they are divorced? Using her sister as his wedding planner? In spite of the humor I found parts of the book a little painful. If like me you have survived an aggressively terrible breakup this might be a little stimulating in a difficult way. Oddly, I this book, and another I recently read have led me to understand gaslighting during a breakup as a technique some people employ. A useful but late realization. Hopefully I won’t need this knowledge in the future, but it does clarify an experience from my past. Better late than never I guess. Most of the characters in this book are beautifully drawn. Even the wicked husband stealing witch is portrayed with enough depth that we come to understand her. However, the husband seems to grow shallower and more entitled as we get to know him. Maybe he is the real wicked witch. A lovely book about family and survival. And may all mothers to be be lucky enough to have their own Lilly.
Virginia NelsonBo
Since I'm having a bad allergic reaction this week, King Benadryl has ensured that I've been practically narcoleptic. You can imagine my surprise when, despite the orders of antihistamines, I lay awake and reading this magnificent book. Downsides: 1. It did take me a couple of chapters to fall in love with the heroine, but once I did... oh man, she had me. 2. Some of the plot points were a bit predictable, but more in that "a-ha! I figured it out!" way rather than being disappointing. 3. As someone born in south western Pennsylvania who then lived a good portion of her life in northeast Ohio, I gotta admit I haven't met many Ohioans who weren't from PA/WVA with Appalachian accents as thick as some of the characters. Upsides: 1. These characters aren't relatable, they're breathing. Like many of Higgins other stories, each of them feels vaguely familiar, as if you've met them or knew them or know them currently. They walk off the page and snag your beating heart right out of your chest. 2. Relatable family issues and banter, as with other of Higgins books, can easily be found within these pages, but somehow the author managed to up her game a bit. Taking seemingly ridiculous situations (a skunk, for instance) Higgins still manages to make every situation not only believable, they're also so emotionally impactful, I found myself laughing and crying in reality rather than simply in thoughts. 3. Un-put-down-able - Again, I was hopped up on enough benadryl to drop an elephant, yet still I stayed up til 3am, fell asleep for a couple of hours out of sheer eye strain, and then awoke to continue where I left off. The readability of this story is phenomenal. 4. Hope - In a world gone dark with headline after headline making our hearts ache for all the things we cannot change, Higgins managed to do the impossible with this book. She gave me a bit of hope. I can't begin to thank the author for that enough. So overall, highly recommend this read. I finished it in less than twenty-four hours, despite a somewhat slow start for me due to life interruptions and, you know, All The Benadryl. Thank you, Kristan Higgins. I needed this book more than I realized.
Eileen M. St Jame
Kristan Higgins knows Cape Cod. This latest book from Higgins is set on the Outer Cape. From Wellfleet to P-Town, she brings the Cape and her delightful characters into our lives. The characters and her beloved Cape are 3 dimensional and real. We follow Lillie as she navigates life after her husband decides to find joy with another women. Lillie is even the one who introduces them! Revenge is the order of the day (well, maybe more than one day) and Lillie is very creative in causing discomfort for the new couple. Disclaimer, no skunks were injured by participating in the shenanigans. Lillie is a certified nurse-midwife and the author really has done her homework here. From the credentials Lillie has earned, to the deliveries and care she gives her clients, it is clear that Ms Higgins has done her research. I have been a maternal-child nurse for 42 years and spent 14 of those years working in obstetrics, neonatology, and childbirth education, so I know how accurate she is. I even worked with old school OBs who performed c-sections for their own convenience. There is definitely a "bad guy" in this book. I highly recommend any book by Kristan and I loved this one! A road trip to The Cape is on my to do list to check out the places in the story.
Short Excerpt Teaser
CHAPTER 1
Lillie
Let's spin back a few months.
Brad had never had great timing. Some examples . . . He booked a weekend for us to New Orleans for September 1. A massive hurricane hit two days before. A decade later, he planned a vacation to Puerto Rico for the last week of October, and New England had a nor'easter that crushed the power grid and grounded all planes for a week the day we were supposed to take off.
When he was twenty, his grandfather died and left him a drafty, never-renovated, single-family brownstone in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a part of New York that no one had really heard of before. Brad, not telling his parents, wanting to be his own man, sold it immediately for $350,000. (The house is worth upwards of $4 million today . . . I check Zillow from time to time.) He invested the real estate sale money in the dot-com bubble four months before it burst and lost every penny he'd earned on the sale.
Brad would leave for the airport early enough, but he'd pick the wrong bridge to cross-if he chose the Sagamore, there'd be an accident. If he picked the Bourne, there'd be construction. If he went to the bathroom during one of Dylan's games, our son would sack the quarterback or make a leaping interception and run the ball in for a touchdown.
He proposed to me as I was vomiting up lunch the day I learned I was pregnant. Literally, as I was on my knees in front of the toilet, gacking, he sat on the edge of the tub and said, "Will you marry me, Lillie?" I had to puke twice more before I could answer.
And then, the night before our son graduated from high school, he told me he was leaving me, mere seconds after I told him I had booked us a trip to Europe come October.
I should've known something was up. Brad never arranged our date nights, but that night he had announced he was taking me out to dinner. To Pepe's in Provincetown, even, one of my favorites, especially because of their incredible coconut cake.
"Wow!" I said. Pepe's was usually reserved for special occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries. "What a nice surprise!"
And, you know, how lovely. Maybe Brad was doing this to celebrate our eighteen years, four months, two weeks and three days of parenthood. Dylan Gustavo Fairchild, named for a poet and my grandpa, was our near-perfect son, a wonderful human and the sun, moon and stars to us. Maybe Brad was feeling sentimental, too. Maybe he wanted to talk about our boy and thank me, something he had done at every one of Dylan's birthdays over the years, which never failed to make me tear up.
Maybe he sensed that I was a little terrified of what life would be like without our boy living with us.
How thoughtful. And talk about perfect timing! I'd originally been waiting till after graduation to tell my husband about the big surprise. As a reward for raising a child into adulthood and sending him off to college-and to have something exciting and different to look forward to-I'd booked us a trip. In April, sensing Brad was getting a case of the blues (as I was), I'd decided we should take a vacation, just the two of us, something we hadn't done since our honeymoon, aside from the very occasional weekend away. I spent hours and hours on travel sites, looking for the best hotels, restaurants, cheap flights, special offers, upgrade possibilities.
Venice for three days, a train ride into the Swiss mountains, where we'd stay at a beautiful hotel on a lake, then five days in Paris, where Brad had always wanted to go. A trip to begin this new chapter of our lives and take the sting of our son's absence away.
Dylan would be out with his friends tonight, so he wouldn't miss us. He was the very best of kids-a football player who viewed his body as a temple and all that. Drinking and drugs could seriously screw up his place at the University of Montana. Also, the dangers of drinking, drugs, unprotected sex (and saturated fats) had been drilled into him since his conception. His mommy was a healthcare professional, after all.
When I got home from work that night, I shaved my legs and washed my hair, conditioned it so I wouldn't break the hairbrush-I took after my Portuguese ancestors with ...
Lillie
Let's spin back a few months.
Brad had never had great timing. Some examples . . . He booked a weekend for us to New Orleans for September 1. A massive hurricane hit two days before. A decade later, he planned a vacation to Puerto Rico for the last week of October, and New England had a nor'easter that crushed the power grid and grounded all planes for a week the day we were supposed to take off.
When he was twenty, his grandfather died and left him a drafty, never-renovated, single-family brownstone in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a part of New York that no one had really heard of before. Brad, not telling his parents, wanting to be his own man, sold it immediately for $350,000. (The house is worth upwards of $4 million today . . . I check Zillow from time to time.) He invested the real estate sale money in the dot-com bubble four months before it burst and lost every penny he'd earned on the sale.
Brad would leave for the airport early enough, but he'd pick the wrong bridge to cross-if he chose the Sagamore, there'd be an accident. If he picked the Bourne, there'd be construction. If he went to the bathroom during one of Dylan's games, our son would sack the quarterback or make a leaping interception and run the ball in for a touchdown.
He proposed to me as I was vomiting up lunch the day I learned I was pregnant. Literally, as I was on my knees in front of the toilet, gacking, he sat on the edge of the tub and said, "Will you marry me, Lillie?" I had to puke twice more before I could answer.
And then, the night before our son graduated from high school, he told me he was leaving me, mere seconds after I told him I had booked us a trip to Europe come October.
I should've known something was up. Brad never arranged our date nights, but that night he had announced he was taking me out to dinner. To Pepe's in Provincetown, even, one of my favorites, especially because of their incredible coconut cake.
"Wow!" I said. Pepe's was usually reserved for special occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries. "What a nice surprise!"
And, you know, how lovely. Maybe Brad was doing this to celebrate our eighteen years, four months, two weeks and three days of parenthood. Dylan Gustavo Fairchild, named for a poet and my grandpa, was our near-perfect son, a wonderful human and the sun, moon and stars to us. Maybe Brad was feeling sentimental, too. Maybe he wanted to talk about our boy and thank me, something he had done at every one of Dylan's birthdays over the years, which never failed to make me tear up.
Maybe he sensed that I was a little terrified of what life would be like without our boy living with us.
How thoughtful. And talk about perfect timing! I'd originally been waiting till after graduation to tell my husband about the big surprise. As a reward for raising a child into adulthood and sending him off to college-and to have something exciting and different to look forward to-I'd booked us a trip. In April, sensing Brad was getting a case of the blues (as I was), I'd decided we should take a vacation, just the two of us, something we hadn't done since our honeymoon, aside from the very occasional weekend away. I spent hours and hours on travel sites, looking for the best hotels, restaurants, cheap flights, special offers, upgrade possibilities.
Venice for three days, a train ride into the Swiss mountains, where we'd stay at a beautiful hotel on a lake, then five days in Paris, where Brad had always wanted to go. A trip to begin this new chapter of our lives and take the sting of our son's absence away.
Dylan would be out with his friends tonight, so he wouldn't miss us. He was the very best of kids-a football player who viewed his body as a temple and all that. Drinking and drugs could seriously screw up his place at the University of Montana. Also, the dangers of drinking, drugs, unprotected sex (and saturated fats) had been drilled into him since his conception. His mommy was a healthcare professional, after all.
When I got home from work that night, I shaved my legs and washed my hair, conditioned it so I wouldn't break the hairbrush-I took after my Portuguese ancestors with ...
