Book Review: "The Lion Is In"

The Lion is In by Delia Ephron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What do you get when you throw together a runaway bride, a five-months-sober hottie, a drab minister's wife and a retired circus lion? You get "The Lion Is In" by Delia Ephron. Tracee is a kleptomaniac who goes to a Baltimore Orioles game with her cheating boyfriend, and is sure he is going to propose to her on the Jumbotron, but instead, he goes to get a hot dog and never comes back, breaking up with her by text message. What's a girl to do except run out of the bridal shop with her now unnecessary--and unpaid for--bridal gown, and into the driver's seat of her best friend's Mustang?

The two friends high tail it south into North Carolina where they have a flat tire which neither of them really knows how to fix. A mousey woman who has just left her overbearing minister husband for the third time ("Who cares what YOU think?" he likes to ask her when she expresses an opinion), comes walking down the road and helps them fix it and all three head further on. However, Tracee falls asleep at the wheel and they end up crashed in a ditch outside The Lion tavern, a ridiculous makeshift building which, in fact, has a real live lion in a cage as an attraction.

Can they find love, sobriety and a sense of self in tiny Fairfield, North Carolina? Does a tired ex-circus lion named Marcel just need a little TLC and a scratching post? Is he a guru and a higher power, or just big lug with a stinky mane? Find out by reading "The Lion Is In", an easy, entertaining novel by the author of "The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants." I loved it.



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