I really enjoyed this book, although I can’t discern why, or even what the book is about. Hope is a 16-year-old waitress who lives and travels with her aunt, Addie, a diner cook. They move to a small town in Wisconsin as a diner tag team, and make a home there, as Hope gets involved in the local politics. The diner owner, G.T., is running for mayor, against the corrupt incumbent, even though he has cancer and just finished a round of chemotherapy.

I know it’s about hope, that’s pretty obvious. But the message doesn’t seem clear. Or at least it’s not clear cut, like, “have hope”. It seems more complicated, like “you don’t have to go looking for the things you want, as long as you’re open-minded about how they might turn out to be, because they might not be what you expected, but they’re still good.” Something like that.