Fireworks Over Toccoa: A Novel

Great read!

This was a really good story but I like to save my 5 Star ratings for the top books. I would really recommend this book and am glad I read it. It was a real page turner! The story starts out with the present life an older woman who I think is 80 years old. She finds, in a museum, a "mystery" item that only she knows about that has been incorrectly identified in the museum as an item from WWII. She tells the story of her life to her neice, who is with her, and the museum leader. The story goes back to prior to WWII but mainly immediately after WWII when the soldiers are coming home. The story takes place in this small southern town. She is married to a returning soldier that she has only known for a relatively short time and only been married to few weeks. He is one of the returning soldiers and she has not seen him in over 3 years. She meets a man that is there to do the fireworks display for the 4th of July celebration. The story is basically about following your heart or doing what is expected of you. You don't find out what the mystery item is until near the end! Romance and mystery in one book is a great book!

Holy crap I love this book!!! From the first chapter, NO from the first page I fell in love. The moment I read on the back cover that Stepakoff had been involved with many wonderful TV shows, including Dawson's Creek, I was very curious about the story. I don't know if that is the reason I could not stop relating the book to other books, TV shows and movies but every time I turned the page I was reminded of something else I loved. I caught myself - unsurprisingly - remembering some of my favorite moments in Dawson 's Creek (Grams' one great kiss). Fireworks Over Toccoa has the Southern charm of a Sarah Addison Allen novel but the way it was told kept reminding me of Titanic.I continued to think I would find something, just one negative thing, because this book couldn't really be this good and finally, towards the end, I knew it was going to be a bit too predictable (which isn't even the worst thing I can say about some books) and then BAM! my whole predictable ending was shot down, as well as a chance of finding a flaw in the story. This was truly a lovely, delightful and delicious story. It made me want to sit down with a Coca-Cola in a bottle and watch some fireworks.I love that the story came about after Stepakoff began research for a TV pilot that never came to be. The characters were so real, and I was so lost in the story that I forgot to wonder which parts of the story were actually real.Love it!!

Let's see, I read this because the author is coming to our local Sr. Ctr soon and I wanted to be familar with his writing.There is so much that is so southern from the southern girls do not sweat but rather glisten to all the references to Coke, the national soda drink in the South.In many ways it is a romance novel and truly if I did not know that the author was a man, I would have thought a woman wrote it. There are many delicate moments in it. Lily's mom, Honey, is so typical of many southern mothers I met when going to college in Charlotte in the early 60's and Lily reminds me of those college gals of the time. Lily's dad is distant but can read her like an open book. Does he see himself in her? Jake also reminds me of a typical nothern guy of Italian descent. Knew them too.This is a good read with a good point and brought me to tears.Only negative is that if you live in Cleveland, OH you do not go to Lake Michigan to fish, you do it in Lake Erie.Enjoy a nice read with good details.

Fireworks Over Toccoa was a mixture of Bridges of Madison County and The Note Book for me. It's the story of an elderly woman and her secret love affair during WWII in 1945.Although the author did an excellent job of engaging the reader emotionally, there were several paragraphs that I found hard to read because they were basically one, long run-on sentence.I liked the story, and was introduced to new thoughts regarding what it must have been like for many war brides during this difficult time in our nation's history, having world-wind romances that end quickly by separation and then everyone changes.Lily's husband Paul, leaves for war after them being together for just three short weeks. He's gone for three years, and just when he's about to return, she meets Jake Russo, her soul-mate. The happenings between them are believable and extremely touching, and the way they are recounted by the older Lily adds to the angst of things.Overall I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others.

"Fireworks over Toccoa" is a book I could've lived without reading. The story takes place at the end of WWII, with twenty-two Lily Davis getting ready for her husband to come home from fighting in the war. We've seen this premise play out over and over again with a spoiled little rich girl married to a nice upscale man yet quickly falls in love with a poor yet handsome and intelligent man. If she stays with her husband she'll continue to live a rich successful yet boring life but if she takes the plunge and runs off with the poor GQ stud, she'll be poor for the rest of her life. What to do? What to do?The storyline is "okay" and interesting in itself; however, whoever edited this book obviously has never been an editor before. How no one edited the s*** out of this book is beyond me. The characters, settings and actions are described word by word, detail by detail - ever hear of the term "less is more"? Author Jeffrey Stepakoff is an "okay" writer and I don't blame him for his use of extreme detail. It's his job to write and his editor's job to uh EDIT.If you're looking for a simple and easy-to-read book, you won't be disappointed; however, please note that there are similar books out there, written far better than "Fireworks of Toccoa".