And Ashley is a young, very-much-in-love bakery owner specializing in muffins who devotes herself to giving back to the community through a nonprofit that helps community members develop skills and find jobs. Mikki is a settled-in-her-routines divorced mother of two, happily a mom, gift-shop owner, and co-parent with her ex-husband, Perry. Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores-a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore-become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love.īree is a friendly but standoffish bookstore owner who keeps everyone she knows at arm’s length, from guys she meets in bars to her friends. Her delivery of the pages of her story on that frosty Christmas Eve is meant as both repentance and warning she fears that Gemma and Fox’s son could be in danger from Violet.Ī novel written for and about mothers but not for the faint of heart it offers no easy answers. Blythe continues to worry for, and even fear, Violet, and then her loneliness drives her to befriend Fox’s new wife. When they have a son who dies in infancy, in a terrible accident, their marriage falls apart. Violet is a difficult baby who becomes a troubled child, but Fox sees little evidence of her problems and blames Blythe for not loving her enough. Interweaving memories of her life with Fox and their daughter, Violet, with the memories and voices of these two women is meant to establish a pattern: Because she comes from a line of struggling mothers, Blythe herself could only expect to struggle as a mother, and struggle she does. The book that unfolds is this novel, and while it begins with a college meet-cute between Blythe and Fox, it truly begins with the story of Etta, who “tried very hard to be the woman she was expected to be” but battled depression that eventually led to suicide, and her daughter, Cecilia, who left altogether when Blythe was 11.
She has come to deliver her written story, one that occasionally includes flashbacks to her mother's and grandmother's lives, so that she may explain to this family-her former husband, his second wife, their child, and, most of all, Blythe’s own daughter-what went wrong. A finely wrought psychological study of motherhood and inherited trauma.īlythe stands outside, watching a perfect family as they move through the small joys of their Christmas Eve preparations.
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