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"Endearing." — Kirkus Reviews

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Curb Appeal is a warm, witty meditation on the beauty of starting over.

RIVER HOUSE PRESS, SEPT. 2025

“Am I fickle or worse, reckless, to embrace so much change?”

Buying fifteen houses over forty years isn’t exactly normal; Lisa Watts knows this. Sure, some of her moves were for jobs, mostly her husband's. But other moves were about pure infatuation. In this candid, often funny memoir, we meet bungalows, Colonials, two getaway homes, and an American Foursquare that Watts adored with inexplicable passion. From newlywed life in Boston to raising kids in Ohio and North Carolina and retirement in Rhode Island, she invites us along on a tour of the places she made home and the longing behind her life on the move. 

Curb Appeal is more than a real estate memoir. It’s a love story about houses and community, a long marriage, the pull of fresh starts, and how the journey itself becomes its own kind of home.

 About the author

Lisa A. Watts is a writer, editor, and reformed serial homebuyer. Her writing focuses on place and reflections on change. She's the author of the travel memoir Crossing Bridges: What Biking Up the East Coast Taught Me About Life After 60 and editor of Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio

 

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"Here is a story of fresh beginnings, the mystery and promise of a new self in a new space, the 'sweet sadness' of goodbyes and the renewable thrill of empty rooms filled with cardboard boxes and the screech of packing tape. The many houses Lisa Watts collects throughout the years aren’t interchangeable sets: they’re puzzles, escape pods, theatrical backgrounds, teachers, lovers, overlords, spurs, goads, nets, and nurseries. They reveal her as they shelter her. They know what’s next. Curb Appeal will stir your wanderlust.”

John Cotter, author, Losing Music: A Memoir

Order Curb Appeal

Order a copy however you prefer to buy books: from your favorite independent bookstore,

the nonprofit Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from this site.

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PAPERBACK

River House Press, 2025

ISBN  9798218801250

$15.99

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EBOOK

River House Press, 2025

ISBN  9798218801267

$4.99

Upcoming Events

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