The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb

My most recent read is by an author I've read two times before.  In this one, our main character is Jeanne Stewart - a woman in the throes of a nervous breakdown.  Her life has been in a downward spiral since she lost her unborn baby and fiance in an auto accident several years prior.  The straw, however, that breaks the camels back is when she finds out her "boyfriend" has been sleeping with dozens of other women and then steals her mountain bike.  She's ends up leaving her Chicago apartment in hopes making it to the Pacific Ocean where she will wade out into the sunset and drown herself.  Instead, however, she stops in Oregon and gets wrapped up in a small town while quietly losing her mind...or maybe restoring her sanity...it's a crap shoot that varies for her day to day. 

The premise of this book sounds horrible but in reality - like all of Cathy Lamb's books - it's mostly comedy.  I think I gave the previous novels of Lamb's higher ratings...this one only gets 3 stars because it just tried too hard to be oh so witty.  An author shouldn't try so hard with her characters because it makes them seem contrived and in the end mundane.  I did like this book, however.  It was entertaining and I did laugh out loud several times.  Cathy Lamb, however, seems to write without giving much thought to a timeline and there are times when reading that I'm not sure she's making sense. In reality, though, her novels aren't meant to be philosophical mind benders.  They aren't meant, I believe to make you think, but rather to escape from such hassles...This one did manage to do that so...read it...or don't...I think you'll like it but a year from now, you, like I probably won't remember much about the book.  Thus the three stars.