Three Fortunes in One Cookie

Book: Three Fortunes in One Cookie
Author: Cochrane Lambert
Review: 3 stars (out of 5)
Light, breezy and easy

If you like the South and all its accoutrements--a large family, manners, religion, etc., and a frothy read, then this book will probably suit you. It's the story of Philip Powell, a chronically underemployed New Yorker who reluctantly returns home to take care of his "sweetly deranged" mother for awhile. In Mississippi, he stays at the antebellum mansion of his domineering and wealthy grandfather, amid four aunts, a gaggle of other relatives and other people he meets, including a leather daddy.

If you are determined to keep each character straight, it's best to forfeit this desire and just go with the flow. Before he even leaves New York there are numerous characters, and it's hard to keep them straight.

Philip eventually finds that home is literally where the heart is, and this theme is nice, along with the fact that the book delves thoroughly into family relationships as opposed to yet another high-camp gay comedy. That said, I wished for a less stereotypical picture of the South, fewer characters who were more distinct, and more scenes where something actually happened as opposed to characters sitting around and talking.

Cochrane Lambert is the pen name for Timothy Lambert and Becky Cochrane, who have authored several other fluffy gay romances, "He's Your Man," "It Had To Be You," "Someone Like You," etc.