Review: Skinny Dipping by Connie Brockway

Mimi Olsen is crushed to learn that her family’s Minnesota retreat is up for sale. Unless someone can get the cash to save it, the house that’s served as a peaceful anchor for generations will go under the hammer. A free spirit like Mimi has the will, what she needs is a way. Moving back into Chez Ducky is a start. But when she meets the man next door, her life is going to change direction in ways she never imagined.

Skinny Dipping by Connie Brockway was a delight to read. My husband has cousins who have a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin so I could certainly relate to this book.

Members of Mimi’s family have jointly owned a cabin on a lake in Minnesota for several generations, but lakefront property has become a valueable commodity and progress and change is coming even to Mimi’s small, placid lake. Huge vacation homes are being built around this lake–what Mimi calls McMansions. The one built next door to Chez Ducky, however, is the one she and her family heap most scorn on. They call it Prescott’s Erection after its owner. Prescott Tierney is a young socially inept computer genius who invented a web application. He has a crush on Mimi and has created an entirely fictional story around her. He and his father Joe have a strained and distant relationship. At the beginning of the book Joe is on his way to see Prescott for an obligatory visit after an obligatory inviation from Prescott.

Mimi is a great character–she has managed to shirk responsibilities her entire life(!), but she is also so much fun. She manages to ignore the fact that some members of her family want to sell Chez Ducky and that she is perhaps the only person who could stop the sale. She doesn’t want to take responsibility so she ignores it.

Joe Tierney, on the other hand, is super responsible and it would seem Mimi and Joe are completely incompatible. However, they both grow and change druing the course of the book and meet in a middle ground.

The book is written with humor and wonderful description and dialogue. Mimi and Joe’s first meeting is under hilarious circumstances. Mimi has been skinny dipping (during the day with many family and friends on-shore). When she tries to retrieve her swimsuit she discovers it must have fallen into the lake. She swims ashore where she can sneak through the woods to try to make it to her cabin. Joe’s rental car has a flat tire which he is changing when he hears something coming through the brush:

He quietly bent lower and peered under the car.

On the other side was a pair of dirty, sand-encrusted, scratched, feminine feet….They shuffled a bit, and Joe heard his car door open. Joe…stood up. “May I…”

A naked female was on her knees on the front seat of the car, dripping mud and gunk all over it. Weeds caped her shoulders, and twigs and leaves stuck out of curly dark pigtails. Mud caked her from elbow to ankle. For an instant she froze, a pair of wide, startled eyes gleaming up at him through a tangle of wet, dank hair.

“Jesus Christ,” Joe whispered. “A Wolf Girl.”

Whoever it was jumped like she’d been hit with a Taser, banging her head on the car roof. She grabbed the top of her head. “Holy Mother! Sonofabitch–”

That passage is classic. The book is at times funny, sad and serious and a great summer read. Mimi and Joe are both older characters. I loved the relationship which develops between the two of them. It takes time for them and isn’t easy, but it is definitely a believeable romance.

I felt the book was more women’s fiction than romance–and I was charmed by the writing, the setting and the characters. The overall message in this book is one I can really relate to also. The lakes in both Wisconsin and Minnesota are being ringed by bigger and bigger homes. The charms of many of these lakes are lost and the peace, quiet and tranquility are nowhere to be found.