Gail Baines is preparing for her daughter’s wedding. Her ex-husband arrives at her door with a stray cat expecting to stay with her on the day when she’s been told that she no longer has a job. Roll in a distressed daughter, a groom with a secret who is severely allergic to cats and there can only be chaos.

This is a short read but packs in a lot. Gail a middle-aged woman is truly at cross-roads and begins to reflect on where her life derailed making her question her own relationships not just with her ex-husband but also the people around her.

I really enjoyed this. There were lighthearted moments interspersed with anxiety for Gail. She worries about her daughter and the wedding and the perceived idea that she is losing her child despite the fact that her daughter hasn’t lived with her for years. The wedding is being controlled by the in-laws which is unusual but Gail sees her involvement as little more than a guest, also unusual. In fact Gail is confronted with her own biases and during the three days must make decisions about her future and take control.  

I liked the idea that the everyday can be entirely disrupted as it was for Gail. A straightforward event was anything but straightforward and of course there is nothing like a wedding to draw out the emotions.

The writing as usual is terrific, sharp and meaningful. Tyler is a master of family dynamics and relationships. There’s nothing wrong with this one. Give it a go.

I’m not too sure how I feel about this family drama story.

Three successful middle-class sisters, once close, split into destructive paths following the death of their sister, Nikki Blue. A year later, they receive an email from their mother telling them to come and look at Nikki’s thing because their family home in New York is to be sold.

The story is split into each sister’s point of view, how they grapple with the loss and the changed dynamic of their once close-knit family. The eldest Avery has been the glue keeping the sisters together in the absence of adequate parenting from their mother and alcoholic father.  She herself is a recovering addict, made good as a lawyer, married to a woman in England. Next is Bonnie, world champion boxer, then Nikki who is a teacher and the youngest, is Lucky an international supermodel.

There is a lot of telling rather than showing as we learn in intricate detail their background stories as individuals as well as their relationships with others and each other.

Besides grief, loss and love, themes of addiction in families is explored well as is the health issues surrounding endometriosis. Underlying it all is the question of what it is to be a sister and a mother. There is no real plot as such as the reader is taken on a journey with each sister’s reckoning of their grief and their exploration of the new family dynamic.

Families can be complicated and the Blue family is certainly that. I didn’t particularly warm to any of the characters, their grief or their behaviour, bad or otherwise. But I did want to see them succeed and the story arc for each character although predictable is what drove me to keep reading.

This slow-paced novel was well written but I was distracted by the constant interiority, sometimes repetitive and detailed anecdotes some of which did little to enhance understanding of character or place. It slowed the pace and struggled to hold my interest.

However, I did find the relationship between the sisters to be tender and heart-warming at times. The scene with Bonnie helping Lucky was particularly well handled giving a detailed insight into addiction.

The last quarter of the novel was more satisfactory as we were given insights into each sibling, their conflict and resolution. It’s  not a novel I loved but it was okay.