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Lookin' Back, Texas
Betty Lynne Davidson is planning her husband’s funeral while overlooking one thing: he’s not dead.
When Suzanne Mullins, forty-two, gets the call from her father to come back home to Texas because her mother has gone off the deep end, she knows it will mean having to look at the faulty foundations of their marriage as well as her own. Betty Lynne has always upheld a perfect facade of home and family, and Suzanne has followed suit. But her life with husband Mike and son Oliver is cracking under the pressure of its own unspoken history.
Looking her past in the eye once and for all, Suzanne hopes that trusting in God’s love and mercy will set all of this craziness straight—even if it does mean having to watch her father give the eulogy at his own funeral.
Endorsements
"What a hoot! Leanna Ellis has a gift for storytelling and for quirky, fun, eccentric characters entirely true to the human experience."
Arlene James
Author of His Small-Town Girl
"An entertaining tale, full of rich characters and a deep lesson about healing the past. Leanna Ellis is on my reading list from here on out."
Rachel Hauck
Author of Sweet Caroline and Diva NashVegas
"A wacky, off-the-wall read that’s spiritually right on target!"
Cathy Marie Hake
Author of Forevermore and Fancy Pants
"In a smooth pairing of wit and grit, Leanna Ellis weaves a tale of flawed relationships and crippling regrets with wonderfully timed comedic threads. A fresh, clever look at the audacity of love that forgives."
Susan Meissner
Author of Blue Heart Blessed
When Suzanne Mullins, forty-two, gets the call from her father to come back home to Texas because her mother has gone off the deep end, she knows it will mean having to look at the faulty foundations of their marriage as well as her own. Betty Lynne has always upheld a perfect facade of home and family, and Suzanne has followed suit. But her life with husband Mike and son Oliver is cracking under the pressure of its own unspoken history.
Looking her past in the eye once and for all, Suzanne hopes that trusting in God’s love and mercy will set all of this craziness straight—even if it does mean having to watch her father give the eulogy at his own funeral.
Endorsements
"What a hoot! Leanna Ellis has a gift for storytelling and for quirky, fun, eccentric characters entirely true to the human experience."
Arlene James
Author of His Small-Town Girl
"An entertaining tale, full of rich characters and a deep lesson about healing the past. Leanna Ellis is on my reading list from here on out."
Rachel Hauck
Author of Sweet Caroline and Diva NashVegas
"A wacky, off-the-wall read that’s spiritually right on target!"
Cathy Marie Hake
Author of Forevermore and Fancy Pants
"In a smooth pairing of wit and grit, Leanna Ellis weaves a tale of flawed relationships and crippling regrets with wonderfully timed comedic threads. A fresh, clever look at the audacity of love that forgives."
Susan Meissner
Author of Blue Heart Blessed
374 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
7 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Leanna Ellis
35 books160 followersAward-winning author, Leanna Ellis, writes sweet, heartwarming romances and closed-door romantic comedies with heart, humor, and hope. With over a million books sold, Ellis has won numerous awards, including the National Readers' Choice Award. She lives in Texas with her husband where they raised their two children, who now live too far away living their dreams but apparently still like to come home, probably to visit their doodle siblings who never grow up and move away. Readers who love Hallmark-style, wholesome love stories, will love The Wedding Letter series and the coming Love Note sereies. You can find more about Ellis at leannaellis.com.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 30, 2010
Title: LOOKIN’ BACK, TEXAS
Author: Leanna Ellis
Publisher: Broadman & Holman
2008
ISBN: 978-0-8054-4697-5
Genre: Inspirational/contemporary women’s fiction
Suzanne Mullins gets a frantic phone call from her father, but it is too garbled to understand. A few minutes later, a neighbor calls and talks about how her father has just died. Suzanne is horrified when she realizes that its her father that died. So, she flies to Texas to be there for her mother. But then she discovers that her father isn’t really dead. He just left her mother. And her mother is planning his funeral.
Suzanne is convinced there is something illegal in what her parents are doing, so she calls her lawyer husband for advice. Mike flies out to be with Suzanne, bringing their fifteen year old son with him. But then it seems as if Suzanne’s life is starting to spiral out of control.
Not only is her mother determined to have a funeral for a very alive man, but residents of the town are reporting ghost sightings…and Suzanne has a secret she’s harbored for years. A secret that could destroy her own marriage.
LOOKIN’ BACK, TEXAS is the second book I’ve read by Ms. Ellis and she is definitely an author whom I’ll be checking out her future books. I enjoyed getting to know Suzanne and Mike, and even the considerably off-kilter Betty Lynne and some of her neighbors.
I didn’t know that is actually a town named Luckenbach, but my husband knew about it when I started sharing some of the events in this book. Some of the scenes are laugh out loud funny. I literally couldn’t put this book down and I read when I should have been doing other things. If you are looking for a great contemporary, be sure to pick up LOOKIN’ BACK, TEXAS. This is a book that will touch your heart. $14.99. 372 pages.
Author: Leanna Ellis
Publisher: Broadman & Holman
2008
ISBN: 978-0-8054-4697-5
Genre: Inspirational/contemporary women’s fiction
Suzanne Mullins gets a frantic phone call from her father, but it is too garbled to understand. A few minutes later, a neighbor calls and talks about how her father has just died. Suzanne is horrified when she realizes that its her father that died. So, she flies to Texas to be there for her mother. But then she discovers that her father isn’t really dead. He just left her mother. And her mother is planning his funeral.
Suzanne is convinced there is something illegal in what her parents are doing, so she calls her lawyer husband for advice. Mike flies out to be with Suzanne, bringing their fifteen year old son with him. But then it seems as if Suzanne’s life is starting to spiral out of control.
Not only is her mother determined to have a funeral for a very alive man, but residents of the town are reporting ghost sightings…and Suzanne has a secret she’s harbored for years. A secret that could destroy her own marriage.
LOOKIN’ BACK, TEXAS is the second book I’ve read by Ms. Ellis and she is definitely an author whom I’ll be checking out her future books. I enjoyed getting to know Suzanne and Mike, and even the considerably off-kilter Betty Lynne and some of her neighbors.
I didn’t know that is actually a town named Luckenbach, but my husband knew about it when I started sharing some of the events in this book. Some of the scenes are laugh out loud funny. I literally couldn’t put this book down and I read when I should have been doing other things. If you are looking for a great contemporary, be sure to pick up LOOKIN’ BACK, TEXAS. This is a book that will touch your heart. $14.99. 372 pages.
November 2, 2008
Loved it! Humorous without being sappy, thought provoking in it's spiritual applications without being preachy. Unusual story line that's quirky and fun.
January 26, 2009
This book has both the funny and frustrating mother/daughter angst that would make a good sitcom!
August 15, 2009
I laughed out loud. I've heard of planning funeral's before someone dies, but this one is about someone that has the funeral before they die! Great read.
February 4, 2011
What a charming cozy fiction read. Of course the message of "honesty is best" was there and very nicely included.
January 30, 2012
I thought this would be another chick-lit book. It was so much more. There was humor, a touch of faith, forgiveness, and an original storyline. Highly recommended.
June 29, 2023
It would have made a fun, quirky book if it had been about 200 pages shorter. So much was repetitive and far fetched.
August 16, 2008
Suzanne hasn't been back to her hometown of Luckenbach, Texas (say it out loud to get the title, which also refers to numerous characters) in years. She has a comfortable life with her husband and teenaged son in California. When a phone call from her father is cut off, and Linda Lou, Luckenbach's biggest gossip calls and mentions that Suzanne's father is dead, Suzanne packs up for a trip to Texas. She finds her mother acting the regal widow, planning the most elaborate funeral Luckenbach has ever seen. But her father isn't dead. Suzanne decides she'll have to be the one to reconcile her meek father with her controlling mother, and her husband (Mike) and son (Oliver) soon join her in this crazy town. Her own past sins haunt her as she's confronted with ex-boyfriend Drew (now the town sheriff) and her husband-stealing friend Josie is seen at a motel with Mike. Meanwhile, the town is splitting open quite literally--either by earthquake or drought as her parents push further apart, causing Suzanne to worry about the foundation of her own marriage.
I enjoyed Betty Lynne's over-the-top behavior. Always the perfect wife and mother, concerned to the utmost with image, she has decided that she would rather be a widow than a divorcee. Her glee in describing her husband's grisly death is hilarious. Ellis doesn't oversimplify the situation--she shows the toll the "death" takes on Suzanne's father's best friend, and she shows the outpourings of flowers and food from friends and neighbors. I enjoyed the metaphor of faulty foundation for both Suzanne's marriage and the parched earth, and found it to be well executed. Ellis has a wicked sense of humor, especially as she describes Betty Lynne: "It occurs to me that this whole scenario of a make-believe funeral is exactly like something the heroine of Gone With The Wind would do. The first time I saw the movie, I cried when Bonnie Blue Butler died after falling off the horse. I thought it was cruel of Margaret Mitchell to kill off an innocent child. Now I realize it was probably a good decision. I know what it's like to grow up with a mother like Scarlett" (p. 128). And when rumors about Mike and Josie start swirling, "Mother leans forward, resting her elbow on the table and whispers in a conspiratorial tone, 'Wanna have a double funeral?'"
That said, this was really a 300-page novel masquerading as a 400-page novel, so it dragged in places, and there was some repetition I could have done without. Had I been the editor, I would have immediately cut the chapters told from Drew's point of view, which really didn't add anything. I know that Ellis used to write romance novels, and convention in that genre usually dictates writing from both the hero's and the heroine's point of view, but it's out of place here. And at any rate, Drew isn't even a major character. Every twenty or thirty pages, Suzanne agonizes over her big secret, and while I understand that it's always on her mind, especially back in her hometown, the fretting about keeping the secret without any progress toward deciding to tell or deciding not to tell was tedious. As far as the Christian element goes, it wasn't pushed enough to make me dislike the book, but there were passages that were over-the-top for general or women's fiction, and I mostly rolled my eyes and skimmed past. There are several mentions of faith, being faithful, and being committed to marriage, and these were fine and flowed well with the narrative. It was only when they were intrusive on the story, trite ("No relationship is perfect. It's a dance."--Bleh.), unbelievable (her conversation with her son in the grocery store about Jesus just didn't ring true), or contradictory (Suzanne goes on about how she and her husband had to work at their marriage, then later says "My marriage survived, not because of me or Mike but because of God") that I was reminded that I was reading Christian fiction with a capital C. I think Ellis could certainly do well writing general or women's fiction, but I think the born-again element is a bit overdone for a general audience. Her snappy sense humor and apt characterization make me interested in checking out her first (non-romance) novel, Elvis Takes a Back Seat.
http://hollybooknotes.blogspot.com
I enjoyed Betty Lynne's over-the-top behavior. Always the perfect wife and mother, concerned to the utmost with image, she has decided that she would rather be a widow than a divorcee. Her glee in describing her husband's grisly death is hilarious. Ellis doesn't oversimplify the situation--she shows the toll the "death" takes on Suzanne's father's best friend, and she shows the outpourings of flowers and food from friends and neighbors. I enjoyed the metaphor of faulty foundation for both Suzanne's marriage and the parched earth, and found it to be well executed. Ellis has a wicked sense of humor, especially as she describes Betty Lynne: "It occurs to me that this whole scenario of a make-believe funeral is exactly like something the heroine of Gone With The Wind would do. The first time I saw the movie, I cried when Bonnie Blue Butler died after falling off the horse. I thought it was cruel of Margaret Mitchell to kill off an innocent child. Now I realize it was probably a good decision. I know what it's like to grow up with a mother like Scarlett" (p. 128). And when rumors about Mike and Josie start swirling, "Mother leans forward, resting her elbow on the table and whispers in a conspiratorial tone, 'Wanna have a double funeral?'"
That said, this was really a 300-page novel masquerading as a 400-page novel, so it dragged in places, and there was some repetition I could have done without. Had I been the editor, I would have immediately cut the chapters told from Drew's point of view, which really didn't add anything. I know that Ellis used to write romance novels, and convention in that genre usually dictates writing from both the hero's and the heroine's point of view, but it's out of place here. And at any rate, Drew isn't even a major character. Every twenty or thirty pages, Suzanne agonizes over her big secret, and while I understand that it's always on her mind, especially back in her hometown, the fretting about keeping the secret without any progress toward deciding to tell or deciding not to tell was tedious. As far as the Christian element goes, it wasn't pushed enough to make me dislike the book, but there were passages that were over-the-top for general or women's fiction, and I mostly rolled my eyes and skimmed past. There are several mentions of faith, being faithful, and being committed to marriage, and these were fine and flowed well with the narrative. It was only when they were intrusive on the story, trite ("No relationship is perfect. It's a dance."--Bleh.), unbelievable (her conversation with her son in the grocery store about Jesus just didn't ring true), or contradictory (Suzanne goes on about how she and her husband had to work at their marriage, then later says "My marriage survived, not because of me or Mike but because of God") that I was reminded that I was reading Christian fiction with a capital C. I think Ellis could certainly do well writing general or women's fiction, but I think the born-again element is a bit overdone for a general audience. Her snappy sense humor and apt characterization make me interested in checking out her first (non-romance) novel, Elvis Takes a Back Seat.
http://hollybooknotes.blogspot.com
June 29, 2011
I didn't realize that this was christian fiction when i requested it on early reviewers, so I was slightly worried that it would be too preachy for me. This turned out not to be the case at all, since Ellis doesn't make God something to be pushed on her reader.[return]However, the book wasn't all I hoped it would be. I felt that often scenes would repeat, with only minor variations. Also, most of the characters came off a bit flat. Betty Lynne is supposed to be a very layered woman, but through most of the novel she is just vicious, so by the time I learned about her sensitive side I no longer cared. MIke is fantastic, but becomes uncharacteristically blunt and whiny when his mother's abandonment is brought up.[return]This is not to say I totally disliked the book. The plot line was interesting and I appreciated how the characters problems and signs to change steadily piled up until they each learned the lesson that their lives needed. Overall, I what I liked about the novel is the part that runs deep and what I disliked is a part that can be fixed with editing without tossing the whole thing.
September 18, 2008
Lookin’ Back Texas was only my second foray into the Christian Fiction genre and, I’m sorry to say, it was not for me.
I enjoyed the idea of Betty Lynne throwing a funeral for her (not dead) husband because she wishes he was dead after he leaves their marriage. That’s funny! I also groove on a good cast of quirky, small town, southern characters & juicy family secrets. Unfortunately, the Christian aspect of this book did not flow easily into the story. To me, the religious statements seemed forced and awkward. I found myself distracted, rolling my eyes and skimming quite a bit. I abandoned this book a little more than halfway through.
I enjoyed the idea of Betty Lynne throwing a funeral for her (not dead) husband because she wishes he was dead after he leaves their marriage. That’s funny! I also groove on a good cast of quirky, small town, southern characters & juicy family secrets. Unfortunately, the Christian aspect of this book did not flow easily into the story. To me, the religious statements seemed forced and awkward. I found myself distracted, rolling my eyes and skimming quite a bit. I abandoned this book a little more than halfway through.
May 5, 2014
Leanna Ellis did a great job! This book had a good storyline that kept you going. You really got the sense of small town living with different characters. Suzanne is called back home to a family crisis, not sure of what happened and what she is going to find when she gets home. When she does get home, she finds out her mom is planning a funeral for her father! What happened to him? Did he really die? The elaborate story and the planning of this "funeral" will have you laughing and wanting to meet these people!
This story is a great representative of honesty, forgiveness, TRUE love, marriage, and trust!
This story is a great representative of honesty, forgiveness, TRUE love, marriage, and trust!
August 30, 2008
Lookin' Back, Texas is the story of a family that copes with a secret by creating lies. Suzanne returns to her childhood home to reconcile the differences between her parents - only to find that her mother has told the town that her father had died. However, her father is not dead - he had left, alive and well.
I never was able to fully get into this book. I found that none of the characters were realistic, relatable or even likable. This would perhaps be a good read for young adults, as the writing is not very descriptive and it is mostly dialogue.
I never was able to fully get into this book. I found that none of the characters were realistic, relatable or even likable. This would perhaps be a good read for young adults, as the writing is not very descriptive and it is mostly dialogue.
September 21, 2009
It took me a very long time to get into this book. The concept was just too wacky for me: When her husband of more than 40 years wants a divorce, Betty Lynne Davidson declares him dead, publishes his obituary and starts planning his funeral. Her married daughter doesn't know how to go along with this scheme while still trying to get her parents to reconcile. Meanwhile she deals with the hometown she left behind.
The message that came out at the end was very good and very clear. The craziness was just too over the top for me to really enjoy it.
The message that came out at the end was very good and very clear. The craziness was just too over the top for me to really enjoy it.
January 22, 2009
This book is crazy!! Part of the way through I was hoping it was going to have a good message in the end, because it is just wacky. But lo and behold, the message of what happens when we try to cover past sins comes out loud and clear. Good book (made me laugh out loud in parts) and good message.
February 22, 2011
I was grateful to have received Lookin' Back Texas by Leanna Ellis from the Early Reviewer program at Library Thing. [return][return]From the back of the book: [return]Betty Lynne Davidson is planning her husband
August 15, 2011
Cute. A little cheesy. Not great literature. But cute and enjoyable.
September 17, 2011
Suzanne Mullins is called back to her home in Texas to help her parents with their troubled marriage. She finds she must also look at her own marriage. Loved Suzanne's Wacky mother, Betty Lynne.
May 6, 2015
This was a slow starting book. Lots of history to build into the story. But once you reach the halfway point it really picks up speed and you realize how much you needed all that history! Haha
July 7, 2017
I loved this book!
July 23, 2013
Fun book
April 10, 2017
What would you do if your mother planned a funeral for your dad, even though he wasn't dead? Well, this is the story of Suzanne Mullins who received a call to come home to Texas and take care of her mother's outrageous scheme. She tries to fix her parents marriage. It brings to light the secret she's been keeping in her own life. A crazy kind of story.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews