Days Like These by Sue Margolis

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"Book Description: In the new novel from the author of Losing Me, one woman is about to discover what happens when you take the “grand” out of “grandma.”
Recently widowed, Judy Schofield jumps at the chance to look after her two grandchildren for six weeks while their parents are out of the country. After all, she’s already raised her own daughter—and quite successfully, if she may say so herself. But all it takes is a few days of private school functions, helicopter parents, video games, and never-ending Frozen sing-alongs for Judy to feel she’s in over her head. As weeks become months, Judy feels more and more like an outsider among all the young mothers with their parenting theories du jour, especially when she gets on the wrong side of the school’s snooty alpha mom. But finding a friend in another grandmother—and a man who takes her mind off all the stress—almost makes it worthwhile. She just needs to take it one incomprehensible homework assignment and one major meltdown at a time. . . ".

I thought that this book would be right up my alley. An older woman taking care of her grandchildren while her daughter and son-in-law leave the country to help an impoverished nation through a tragedy of massive destruction. I thought that this would be a humorous read per the books description - what with an older woman trying to fit in with the modern idea of raising a family and instead I found it to be a book about taking sides, class distinction, no humor to be found and more neurosis than you can shake a stick at. Very unoriginal and done with little finesse.

What I did take away from this book is that the parents of these children are quite selfish for putting their careers ahead of their family. I DO understand that what they did was extremely altruistic and I should be admiring them, but I did not. These parents are already helping people just by being Dr.’s and one could have left to tend to this devastated country while the other stayed home and then switched places.

I also realize that if both parents hadn’t left at the same time, there would be no book. 

The Britishisms and slang started to get on my nerves and I had to use my dictionary more times than I spent reading the actual novel. Yes, this book was by a Brit author, I GET IT. But seriously if a book is going to be marketed to the USA then tone down *some* of the Brit speak please. 

I also found the character’s to be very annoying, dislikable, selfish, spoiled, one dimensional and a bit clichéd. So was the plot (what there was of a plot). Some authors can do a wonderful job of writing simply about the days in the lives of their characters with nothing guiding these character’s but to get to the end of the book -this was not one of these books.

I could go on about why I thought that this wasn’t a good book, but it IS a good book, and therefore why I gave it a higher star rating than I normally would have. However, it was just not for someone like me (who is actually the age of the Grandmother) who was raised to believe that family came first in most cases; a career (both mothers AND fathers) came in second. Not always, but mostly.

*ARC supplied by publisher.