The Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness

The Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness

Maddie Dawson

Genre: Women's Fiction

Summary (from Goodreads): Three women, three lives, and one chance to become a family…whether they want to or not.

Newly orphaned, recently divorced, and semiadrift, Nina Popkin is on a search for her birth mother. She’s spent her life looking into strangers’ faces, fantasizing they’re related to her, and now, at thirty-five, she’s ready for answers.

Meanwhile, the last thing Lindy McIntyre wants is someone like Nina bursting into her life, announcing that they’re sisters and campaigning to track down their mother. She’s too busy with her successful salon, three children, beautiful home, and…oh yes, some pesky little anxiety attacks.

But Nina is determined to reassemble her birth family. Her search turns up Phoebe Mullen, a guarded, hard-talking woman convinced she has nothing to offer. Gradually sharing stories and secrets, the three women make for a messy, unpredictable family that looks nothing like Nina pictured…but may be exactly what she needs. Nina’s moving, ridiculous, tragic, and transcendent journey becomes a love story proving that real family has nothing to do with DNA.

Review: A feel good story about a woman who finds her birth mother and sister and manages to bring them together to build an unusual new family.  It had a few too-good-to-be-true moments, and Nina's attitude was a little too Pollyanna-ish to seem real, but it was an enjoyable and comfortable read.  I will look for other books by this author, because her writing style made me think that I could be friends with her characters.

Rating: 4 stars