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Legend has it — and everyone claims — that you can never go home again.

Oh, sure. You can haul belongings from the dorm to the bedroom you’ve shared with your sister since you were five. You can heal wounds beneath your ancient 4-H ribbons in the aftermath of adult heartbreak. You can hide out in mom and dad’s house for myriad reasons, but it’s never the same. The home you knew before leaving is never the home you return to.

In the new novel “The Monsters of Templeton” by Lauren Groff, Wilhelmina Sunshine Upton arrives at her family’s cottage, disheveled and distraught. But the comfort she longs for in Templeton isn’t what she finds — or needs.

On the morning that the dead monster broke the surface of Lake Glimmerglass near Templeton, New York, Willie Upton returned to the town where eight generations of her family had lived. Just months before, Primus Dwyer, her former teacher, chose Willie to work alongside him in a graduate program. He had chosen her to sleep beside him, too. But now Dwyer has reconciled with his witchy wife and Willie is carrying his child. Pregnant and red-faced from crying, Willie retreated to the womb of home, fleeing what had become of her life.

Not long before Willie was born, her mother, Vivienne, had had her own homecoming to Templeton. Because her parents had mysteriously died, commune-living Vivienne was suddenly an heiress. And because Viv was never sure who had gotten her pregnant, Willie was always told that she had three fathers.

But now Viv dropped a bombshell. Willie’s father was no hippie. He lives in Templeton, and he, too, descends from the Temple family. As the town becomes a growing focus of the scientific community, The Lump grows within Willie and her curiosity grows, too. Which Templetonian is her father? Were the closets of the aristocratic scions of Templeton filled with skeletons?

While I really, really loved this audiobook, there are a few things you need to know when listening to “The Monsters of Templeton”: first, this story is going to ask you to suspend disbelief now and then. You’ve been warned.

Secondly, there are errant characters that pop up often in the audiobook, and that can be discombobulating unless you understand that they’re musings from Willie’s forebears and their servants. Printing out the family tree on the “enhanced” audio disc will help a lot. If you choose to skip that, just be aware why the shift of voice.

Lastly, if you keep this audiobook in your car, make sure you have plenty of gas. Partly because of Nicole Roberts’ performance and partly because of author Lauren Groff’s writing, this story will have you sitting in a parking lot, idling, listening, unwilling to shut the car off and go about your business.

“The Monsters of Templeton” is a great choice for book group, vacation, or nice, quiet weekend tucked on the sofa, awaiting spring. Look for it at your library or bookstore. It’s a novel you’ll definitely want to take home.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when a friend is lost.

No, not the kind of loss where words cause angry footstomping and slamming doors. I mean the kind of loss where funerals are held and there’s a friend-shaped hole in your heart forever.

In the new novel, “Now You See Him” by Eli Gottlieb, a man loses his childhood friend in the most violent of ways. But the death doesn’t tip his world upside down nearly as much as the other losses he experiences.

Rob Castor was a wunderkind. Castor, the author of a book that shot to the top of the charts, enjoyed the media frenzy that accompanies a stellar new writer. But when it was time for Book Number Two, Rob could barely pick up a pen. Writer’s block stymied him, and made his mood as dark as his stories. When Rob’s cool-as-ice girlfriend, Kate, cheated on him, Rob went off the deep end.

Nick Framingham and Rob were best friends since they were 10 years old, and Rob’s actions shock Nick to the core. Rob was like a brother to Nick. He was smarter, more at ease with girls, more confident. Summertime with Rob and Rob’s sister, Belinda, were the happiest memories Nick had.

Over the years, Belinda drifted in and out of Nick’s life. Rob became famous and Nick got married. Now Rob is gone, Belinda is back in town, and Nick can’t seem to pull himself together. His marriage, always fragile, starts to teeter. Nick loves Lucy, but he feels distant to her. Belinda, though… Belinda understands.

And while he’s remembering his childhood and his friendship with his neighbors-turned-best-friends, Nick remembers something else. His older brother, Patrick, was their parents’ favorite. It was so obvious. The boring old Framinghams. Bland as white bread, they now were trying on new personas as swinging seniors in a retirement community. Nick is glad they moved a thousand miles away.

And then Rob’s mother calls. Boozy, she says she has “a secret” for Nick.

It’s nothing compared to the secret Nick carries within himself.

“Now You See Him” is a beautiful, beautiful book filled with the most lyrical sentences and poetry-like phrases you’ll ever read in fiction. The characters are complex, the scenarios are real, the feelings are raw.

But I just wasn’t crazy about this novel.

Author Eli Gottlieb takes for-ev-er to get to the point of this story, which makes for some pretty tedious reading. Nick is, at first, a sympathetic person but he quickly becomes not-so-nice and progresses to becoming someone you don’t want to know. He’s troubled for a reason, but the reason doesn’t present itself until the last pages of the book. That wouldn’t be so bad, if the first 200-plus pages weren’t so much blah, blah, blah.

If you want to read a novel with gorgeous turn-of-phrase and don’t mind the slowness, pick up a copy of “Now You See Him”. If you want an action-packed, engaging novel, though, reading this one is a loss of good time.

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The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.