Book picks similar to
Changing Places by Colette Caddle
fiction
family-drama
friendship
on-deck
The Terrace
Maria Duffy - 2012
. .In Number Eight he wants a baby, she doesn't. The guy a few doors down just wants to find love. Across the street a single mum struggles to cope. While the people next door might appear to have it all, their mortgage holder knows different.When the street syndicate wins the National Lottery, it seems that things are looking up. Enter a New York production company on a mission to document a 'quintessential' Dublin community - just as it becomes clear that the winning ticket is nowhere to be found.Facades begin to crumble in the scramble to uncover the missing ticket and, as the gloves come off for the once unremarkable residents of St Enda's, it's game on with everything to play for.
The Perfect Neighbors
Sarah Pekkanen - 2016
She’s adjusting to high heels, scrambling to cook dinner for her family after a day at the office—and soaking in the dangerous attention of a very handsome, very married male colleague. Kellie’s neighbor Susan Barrett begins every day with fresh resolutions: she won’t eat any carbs. She’ll go to bed at a reasonable hour. And she’ll stop stalking her ex-husband and his new girlfriend. Gigi Kennedy seems to have it all together—except her teenage daughter has turned into a hostile stranger and her husband is running for Congress, which means her old skeletons are in danger of being brought into the light.Then a new family moves to this quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac. Tessa Campbell seems friendly enough to the other mothers, if a bit reserved. Then the neighbors notice that no one is ever invited to Tessa’s house. And soon, it becomes clear Tessa is hiding the biggest secret of all.
Between a Mother and Her Child
Elizabeth Noble - 2012
One impulsive wedding later and with the arrival of three perfect children, Jake, Aly and Stan, the Barrett family seem to have it all. Until the day their world stops turning!
This Last Kiss
Madeleine Reiss - 2016
But, try as she might, she can't run from true love forever.
Smoke
Catherine McKenzie - 2015
Now she works as the local arson investigator in a beautiful, quaint town in the Rockies. But that tranquil life vanishes when she and her husband agree to divorce and a fire in nearby Cooper Basin begins to spread rapidly. For Elizabeth, containing a raging wildfire is easier than accepting that her marriage has failed.For Elizabeth’s ex-friend Mindy, who feels disconnected from her husband and teenage children, the fire represents a chance to find a new purpose: helping a man who has lost his home to the blaze. But her faith is shattered by a shocking accusation.As the encroaching inferno threatens the town’s residents, Elizabeth and Mindy must discover what will be lost in the fire, and what will be saved.
Maybe in Another Life
Taylor Jenkins Reid - 2015
She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. Hannah hesitates. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan?In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into radically different stories with large-scale consequences for Hannah, as well as the people around her. As the two alternate realities run their course, Maybe in Another Life raises questions about fate and true love: Is anything meant to be? How much in our life is determined by chance? And perhaps, most compellingly: Is there such a thing as a soul mate?Hannah believes there is. And, in both worlds, she believes she’s found him.
The Sea Glass Cottage
RaeAnne Thayne - 2020
The 16-hour work days are unfulfilling and so are things with her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when she hears that her estranged mother, Juliet, has been seriously injured in a car accident, Liv has no choice but to pack up her life and head home to beautiful Cape Sanctuary on the Northern California coast.It’s just for a few months—that’s what Liv keeps telling herself. But the closer she gets to Cape Sanctuary, the painful memories start flooding back: Natalie, her vibrant, passionate older sister who downward-spiraled into addiction. The fights with her mother who enabled her sister at every turn. The overdose that took Natalie, leaving her now-teenaged daughter, Caitlin, an orphan.As Liv tries to balance her own needs with those of her injured mother and an obstinate, resentful fifteen-year-old, it becomes clear that all three Harper women have been keeping heartbreaking secrets from one another. And as those secrets are revealed, Liv, Juliet, and Caitlin will see that it’s never too late—or too early—to heal family wounds and find forgiveness.
The Little Cottage On Lovelace Lane
Alice Ross - 2016
But after months together in a caravan while the renovations take place, boyfriend, Luke, is not quite so enamoured with the place.With Lily and Luke's relationship stretched to the limit, a dishy builder taking over the project, Luke's two precocious kids to deal with, and her gran acting very strangely, will Hollyhocks ever become Lily's dream home? Or will it be a bit of a nightmare?
The Seven Day Switch
Kelly Harms - 2021
What a difference a week makes in a heartfelt, laugh-out-loud novel by the Washington Post bestselling author of The Overdue Life of Amy Byler.Celeste Mason is the Pinterest stay-at-home supermom of other mothers’ nightmares. Despite her all-organic, SunButter-loving, free-range kids, her immaculate home, and her volunteering awards, she still has time to relax with a nice glass of pinot at the end of the day. The only thing that ruins it all is her workaholic, career-obsessed neighbor, who makes no secret of what she thinks of Celeste’s life choices every chance she gets.Wendy Charles is a celebrated productivity consultant, columnist, and speaker. On a minute-by-minute schedule, she makes the working-mom hustle look easy. She even spends at least one waking hour a day with her kids. She’s not apologizing for a thing. Especially to Celeste, who plays her superior parenting against Wendy whenever she can.Who do Celeste and Wendy think they are? They’re about to find out thanks to one freaky week. After a neighborhood potluck and too much sangria, they wake up—um, what?—in each other’s bodies. Everything Celeste and Wendy thought they knew about the “other kind of mom” is flipped upside down—along with their messy, complicated, maybe not so different lives.
After You
Julie Buxbaum - 2009
The unexplored doubts of a marriage. And the redemptive power of literature...Julie Buxbaum, the acclaimed author of The Opposite of Love, delivers a haunting, gloriously written novel about love, family, and the secrets we hide from each other—and ourselves.It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie Lerner’s best friend, Lucy, was murdered in front of her young daughter. And, as best friends do, Ellie dropped everything—her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs—to travel to London and pick up the pieces of Lucy’s life. While Lucy’s husband, Greg, copes with his grief by retreating into himself, eight-year-old Sophie has simply stopped speaking.Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel’s winding passageways, its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do Lucy’s secrets—some big, some small—secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. Over a summer in London, as Ellie peels back the layers of her friend’s life, she’s forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she’d hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie’s carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life—and those around her— forever. A novel that will resonate in the heart of anyone who’s had a best friend, a love lost, or a past full of regrets, After You proves once again the unique and compelling talent of Julie Buxbaum.
Pretty Woman
Fern Michaels - 2005
Now it's her third wedding anniversary, and Rosie, fed up with Kent's mistreatment, realizes her estranged best friend was right. But the day after kicking Kent out and beginning a diet and exercise regime, Rosie experiences another life-changing event: she wins $302 million in the Wonderball lottery. Now with Kent lurking in the shadows to claim a share of her money, Rosie needs her friends more than ever. As she works out under the eye of sexy personal trainer Jack Silver, a stronger new Rosie emerges -- a woman who wants to learn to trust love once again. Can she keep her vow not to be stopped by Kent's bitterness and her own self-doubts and jump into life with a passion she didn't know she possessed?
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Donna Hay - 2005
Her daft name, her hand-me-down clothes, her mother's habit of turning up to school parents' evenings dressed like Shirley Bassey. Most of all she hated being the daughter of Normanford's only single parent, failed nightclub singer and resident goodtime girl, Sadie Moon. As soon as she could, she decided to quit Yorkshire. She bought a one-way ticket to London, changed her name and escaped - for ever, so she thought. But nearly twenty years on, fate has conspired to send Roo MacPherson, now a successful management consultant, back to Normanford. Back to the friends and family she once knew too well, and the boy who broke her heart. And back to the infamous Sadie, now in her 50s and still acting like a teenager. But as Roo discovers, there are two sides to every story. Perhaps the past is not exactly as she remembers it ...
Crossing Paths
Dianne Blacklock
Much better to see it for what it is than to be perennially disappointed.With a hefty new mortgage, a frustrating career as a newspaper columnist and a flailing relationship with a married co-worker, Jo Liddell is resigned to living a less-than-perfect life.That is, until she crosses paths with Joe Bannister – a celebrated foreign correspondent returning home to care for his dying father. Against all her natural instincts, Jo finds herself falling for Joe, and with his help begins to realise that she might deserve to be happy after all. But when she decides to take the plunge and give love a chance, the results are catastrophic. And so Jo must fight hard for everything she never believed in – success, self-acceptance, and above all, real love.
Now That You Mention It
Kristan Higgins - 2017
Two steps back. The Tufts scholarship that put Nora Stuart on the path to becoming a Boston medical specialist was a step forward. Being hit by a car and then overhearing her boyfriend hit on another doctor when she thought she was dying? Two major steps back.Injured in more ways than one, Nora feels her carefully built life cracking at the edges. There's only one place to land: home. But the tiny Maine community she left fifteen years ago doesn't necessarily want her. At every turn, someone holds the prodigal daughter of Scupper Island responsible for small-town drama and big-time disappointments.With a tough islander mother who's always been distant and a wild-child sister in jail, unable to raise her daughter--a withdrawn teen as eager to ditch the island as Nora once was--Nora has her work cut out for her if she's going to take what might be her last chance to mend the family.But as some relationships crumble around her, others unexpectedly strengthen. Balancing loss and opportunity, a dark event from her past with hope for the future, Nora will discover that tackling old pain makes room for promise...and the chance to begin again.