Sisters Like Us by Susan Mallery

I really, really like Ms. Mallery's (somewhat) standalone novels. She's able to inject more emotion and deeper characterization into these longer stories. We really get to know Harper Szymanski, an overworked divorcee, and her teenage daughter. Harper is just trying to keep herself together. After working for years to get her husband through podiatry school, he dumped her. Now she lives in the house with Becca. Harper's mother, Bunny, lives in a garage apartment and seems to just hang around shaming both Harper and her sister, Stacey, because neither are 1950s housewives.
Stacey is an amazing scientist working on helping people with MS. She's a fully-confident woman who just turned forty. And, oh yeah, she's sort of pregnang. And mostly in denial. See, she's got this perfect mother and this perfect sister who both know instintively how to mother the people around them. Stacey, just doesn't feel it.
Harper doesn't really feel perfect either. Her business isn't what she planned and she can't even pick out an assistant who can actually help her (cameos from the previous book!). Because she's spending so much time with trying to keep food in the house and a roof over her daughter's head, she's losing track of what her daughter's actually doing. And Becca has her own set of problems...
I really liked this book. I didn't completely buy that Becca turned around so fast and didn't really get her connection with Ashton but I mostly liked the Lucas/Harper story line (except for the Big Misunderstanding which seemed just sort of stuck in so it wouldn't be super-smooth.)

Four stars
This book comes out January 23
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley
Follows A Million Little Things

A Million Little Things by Susan Mallery

I really do adore Ms. Mallery's trilogies. There's a depth to both the characters and their stores that you don't get from the average Fool's Gold romance novel (not knocking those books, I love them too, they just fulfill a different reading niche.)
We met Pam earlier in the series. Her husband died unexpectedly and it has now been a couple of years and, while she's not moving on per se, she has settled into a routine. One of the things that she has to cope with now is her daughter Jennifer.
Jen has an 18-month-old who isn't speaking and she's terrified. She's also terrified about toxins, about germs, and about her husband's new job and new partner. Just to get down to it, she's anxious, tired, and unable to sleep. Her whole world revolves around her son and the people around her are beginning to feel shut out.
One of those people, Jen's best friend Zoe, contacts Pam to see if they can maybe figure something out. It's this incident that leads Pam to very subtly set Zoe up with her son, Steven and it's going very well. Unfortunately, partway through the book, Zoe find out she's pregnant by her ex and it throws Pam off course disrupting her relationships with Zoe, with Jen, with Steven, and even the burgeoning romance with Zoe's father Miguel.
This book has a nice balance between the three main protagonists. Pam is a jumping off point but we get to see the fears behind just starting to have a family and what that can mean in today's world, a mother who is concerned for her young son, and even a mother who has grown children and is worried about them as well.
A wonderful book for those who have read the rest of the Mischief Bay series but also for those new to Susan Mallery as well.

Four and a half stars
This book comes out February 28
Follows The Friends We Keep
Followed by Sisters Like Us

The Friends We Keep by Susan Mallery

THESE books are the reasons I keep reading Susan Mallery. The Fool's Gold series is okay in my opinion but it's the books outside of that series that I want to read as soon as possible.
While we get Nicole from The Girls of Mischief Bay, there isn't really anyone else from that series (blissful!) Instead, while Nicole is exploring dating after being divorced, we also learn more about Gabby Schaefer, a stay-at-home mom who has less than 60 days until she gets to go back to work, and Hayley Batchelor who desperately wants a child but is aware that another pregnancy might kill her.
While the Fool's Gold series is a little lighter, these other books are more along the lines of Kristan Higgins' non-series books having all the feels. Gabby's stepdaughter is petulant and a bit spoiled and.. well, there's more there. Hayley's husband isn't happy that she's sacrificing so much to have a child, even to the extant of threatening her own life. And Nicole isn't sure that she's ready to risk her heart again, even for an attractive children's book author.
Some of the stories were a little too broad, but that was minor in a very good book.

Followed by A Million Little Things

Girls of Mischief Bay by Susan Mallery

Oh, I do enjoy the Mallery books that tend more toward chick-lit than true romance. Yes, Shannon Rigg find love in this story, but there is so much more. We see a marriage wracked by devastation and another on the brink of disaster. Not only do we really get to know these characters (I like Fool's Gold well enough but do we have to hear about EVERY couple EVER mentioned in the series in EVERY book? It leaves little room for the main story) but we also get to see the gritty realities of life, not just the glitter and glamour. Don't get me wrong, I love my "fluffy-happy" romances but, in Mallery's case, I like her more serious books more.
In this book, we again see a group of three women who are at differet stages in their lives. Nicole, a pilates instructor, has a young son and a husband who decided to quit his job (without talking to her) and become a screenwriter. Sharon, wildly successful, is now in her forties and wondering if family life is for her. And Pam who is in a relatively happy marriage but feels restless nonetheless.
This book come out on February 24th, 2015.