A Million Little Things (Mischief Bay #3) by Susan Mallery

BOOK DESCRIPTION: 

From the bestselling author of The Girls of Mischief Bay and The Friends We Keep comes a twisty tale of family dynamics that explores what can go terribly, hysterically wrong when the line between friendship and family blurs 

Zoe Saldivar is more than just single-she's ALONE. She recently broke up with her longtime boyfriend, she works from home and her best friend Jen is so obsessed with her baby that she has practically abandoned their friendship. The day Zoe accidentally traps herself in her attic with her hungry-looking cat, she realizes that it's up to her to stop living in isolation.Her seemingly empty life takes a sudden turn for the complicated-her first new friend is Jen's widowed mom, Pam. The only guy to give her butterflies in a very long time is Jen's brother. And meanwhile, Pam is being very deliberately seduced by Zoe's own smooth-as-tequila father. Pam's flustered, Jen's annoyed and Zoe is beginning to think "alone" doesn't sound so bad, after all.Friendship isn't just one thing-it's a million little things, and no one writes them with more heart and humor than book club sensation Susan Mallery! 

4.5 Stars

A Million Little Things by Susan Mallery

I don’t usually like books A with more than one story-line going on at a time, usually I only like this if the characters are secondary and it doesn’t impact the main story at all. However, Ms Mallery is a deft hand at using this writing device and with this book it was used to a very good advantage. The three women we meet will all take center stage, so we can look at it as if this book is three separate stories -it isn’t though, since all three women are either related or best of friends.

Three separate women -Zoe, Pam, and Jen - an older woman (Pam) and her issues with widowhood, her son, and her daughter; a younger mother (Jen) who must come to terms with her toddler son who won’t speak. Not can’t but won’t. And Zoe who I think of as the main character because we meet her first and who really will have some big problems to iron out, as we will see later in this book. 

I loved this book - it is all about very strong women and how they cope with what seems like insurmountable problems, they cope with romance in their lives, sexual issues, altering ones’ outlook on life, relationship issues, child rearing and birth issues as well as many smaller problems along the way.

The self-growth of each of these women and the paths they had to take to realize their true worth, was well worth the time I took to read this novel. This is way more than a romance novel-it is a romance inside of a women’s lit novel and is well worth the ride. Except for one interesting scene late in this book, there is no sex, not even with Zoe and Steven who are having the ‘romance’. This was surprising to me, but in a happy way. 

This book was a joy to read - I am not always happy with Ms Mallery’s writing, but this one was wonderful. If there was one issue I had it was a problem I had with Zoe’s character later in the book and the fact that the author seemed to use ‘beating a dead horse’ as a plot device and it did nothing to move the story along.

*ARC supplied by publisher.