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 … 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.
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Really enjoyed this book. Great characters and an engaging story.
A good read about characters who are struggling with their identity as adoptees and building their families. MATCHMAKING FOR BEGINNERS won me over a little more absolutely, perhaps because of that joy of discovering a new author I really enjoyed and a little more bite from the bad guys, but this was a world I enjoyed, too, perhaps especially for the relationship between the main character and Indigo/Kayla, the acting-out teenage daughter of her love interest. Dawson has a knack for imparting lovely little life lessons that dozens of people will notate in their Kindles (thankfully, fully earned by the plot). As a writer I enjoyed lines like “She looked like one of those women who were always in full control, always aware of which pocket of her eight-pocket L.L. Bean vest she put her self-confidence in.” I’m only two books into Dawson’s oeuvre, but I’m guessing this would never apply to any of her heroines. Recommended for readers of well-written feel-good women’s fiction.
Emotional, very realistic. Loved it.
This is Nina Popkin’s story of how her life begins after her divorce and her adopted mother’s death. She begins a search for her birth mother, as she has spent her whole life looking at people and wondering if they “belong” to her. Along the way, she finds her sister, a husband, two teen-aged stepchildren, and others that “belong” to her.
The story is told from her point of view, her birth mother’s (Phoebe) and her sister’s (Lindy). It begins with the pregnant teenaged Phoebe leaving Nina at home and sneaking out of the house, leading to a night of disaster that will change everyone’s life. Fast forward 30+ years, and Nina is opening the back door of the house to throw funeral casseroles (food, dish and all) out the door. I was all prepared to not like Nina, who was childish, impetuous and clingy. Not only did she fling the casseroles out the door, she’s still texting her remarried ex-husband. His new wife, oh yeah, the one he had an affair with, is upset with Nina as she isn’t respecting their boundaries. However, this was so out of character for her as she ended up being the fixer and it never really did make sense to me.
If it weren’t for the writing style, I wouldn’t have finished the book. The story is a cliche: there’s some angst along the way, but there’s a storybook ending to it and everyone lives happily ever. The writing, however, is witty and will make you laugh. Anyone who has raised teenagers will appreciate those passages in the book. You know, where you try to remain outwardly calm and quiet the really loud screams in your head like WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?? OVER MY DEAD BODY!! YOU ARE GROUNDED FOREVER MISTER!!
This was a little on the long side, and sometimes there was way too much detail about nothing, but it was still enjoyable. Quite a few storylines to keep you interested, and great character development.
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November 27, 2020
Very good complicated book!
Adoption from all kinds of angles is explored in this book. I have someone who wants to know Nothing, so this was a treat to read. Very sympathetically handled, with humor and grace.
The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness is another book by Maddie Dawson that readers everywhere will love. She writes characters that pop off the page and into hearts and beneath the story are layers of life matters that beg to be discussed.
Grab your copy now!
I really enjoying reading this quirky story. There was so much more emotion than I had expected, both tears and laughs.
“I talked to my mother today,” I said after a long time of us silently sitting next to each other on the couch.
“Your mother that died?”
“No. I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but it’s very hard to talk to dead people. Mostly they don’t answer.”
Nina decides to look for her biological family after her adopted mom passed away. She really had no other family and she is searching for connections and not realizing that she is already just drawing people to her.
“But how do you do it?” I said. “How do you make people love you—really love you, when you don’t belong to them?”
Great narration and I loved that I was able to go back and forth between audiobook and ebook without losing my place.
-5 Stars!-
This is not the genre of book I am typically drawn to but based on readers’ reviews and the fact that is was for free, I thought I would give it a try. Oh my, as I read the first few chapters I felt I was in the midst of a Lifetime movie: Nina, divorced, adopted, never felt she quite belonged, and learned of new details about her adoption just before her adoptive mom died of liver cancer. Oh, and she met the most handsome divorcee with two teens who was looking for a new home (Nora is a real estate agent and house stager). Really? About half way through the novel I almost gave up – Lifetime times 10 – now Nora found her birth sister, Lindy, who of course has OCD tendencies (I am being nice), the perfect life with beautiful children, a successful business, and a hunky husband, who was not happy about Nina intruding to her life.
Determined to finish this novel, I pushed away all my preconceived notions about what I was reading and opened myself to the author’s writing and forged ahead. I am glad I did. Yes, this book has the flavor of a soap opera but it also portrays people in their various dysfunctional modes, colored by their pasts, flawed by their own experiences. The characters are all extremes of their individual shortcomings and eccentricities (this book is really begging to become a movie), but sweeping the typified personae aside, I fell in love with the characters and their stories. Having a rather bizarre family and personal life (most people do) I followed the rest of the book with zeal.
Although the ending was a bit too neatly tied in a pink ribbon for my taste, however the closing of this novel left me refreshed, feeling good about life, and even pondering about the futures of some of the characters. It reminded me of the mantra from the late 90s sensation “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”, specifically that things all do somehow work out in the end. I am not so sure that this applies to me as I have stage 4 breast cancer, but it gave me a sense of peace that my family will be work things out and be fine, no matter how difficult the journey is once I am gone. And that is a good thing for me.
Read this book, there is laughter, some ‘oh I cannot believe the author went there’, romance, family upheaval (lots), and fun Most of all, there is the reminder that life, as each of us knows it, is never perfect and we CAN work with what we have and find happiness.
Favorite Quotes:
Even after I finally took the plunge and got married, Dan and I lasted just six months after the wedding, and then one night he took me out to dinner and told me he’d met Julie, and that she had the magic sauce he’d been looking for, so surely I could see that he had to leave, didn’t I, because even though he really, really, really like me, and maybe would always love me at some level, it wasn’t the level that really counted with his shadow side and his mystical side and the side of him that wanted to turn vegan and loll about in hot tubs. He said all this as well as some other crap you simply can’t believe someone would actually say to you out loud, especially someone you love. Loved at some level.
I was far from being the only adopted kid in my circle. For reasons I’ve never understood, our quiet little Catholic neighborhood in Bernford had tons of them. Five on every block, at least. It was as though there’d been a Give Your Baby Away decade, and unplanned-for kids had been handed out randomly to strangers in town.
I actually had cried so much my eyelids were chapped. There ought to be a special cosmetic for that. Grief-Erase, they could call it.
Don’t try to make friends with me over My Little Pony. Have some respect for yourself.
I wanted nothing more than to reach over and start pummeling her right there and then. Yes, while I was driving. After that wave passed, I then wanted to slam on the brakes and push her onto the side of the road and drive away, cackling. Ha ha ha, teenaged girls!
She was one of those women who looked like she was in full control, always aware of which pocket of her eight-pocket L.L. Bean vest she last placed her self-confidence in.
My Review:
The Survivors Guide to Family Happiness was a pure delight, a feast of words, a banquet of wit, and an engrossing read. I adored every fascinating character, each well-chosen word, and every single one of the myriad threads that were cleverly woven into a beautiful tapestry of a tale. It was phenomenally well-written from multiple points of view. I was enthralled by the rich layers that effortlessly constructing the story with amusing observations, witty insights, and the insider anecdotes used to present the rather serious life transitions that each character was bringing to the story, as well as the multiple revelations brought on by the unraveling of a thirty-three-year-old secret. And I just love unraveling deep dark secrets. The writing was clever, emotive, crisp, and extraordinarily engaging. I frequently smirked, chortled, and loudly laughed aloud, but there were also emotionally stirring scenes that squeezed my heart. The pacing of the story was ingenious with the crafty Ms. Dawson doling out tasty morsels to whet my appetite yet kept me hungry, curious, and anxious for the undoubtedly delectable main course to be served, while I also enjoyed savoring each nugget as it came along. And I was more than sated by the satisfying conclusion, although I always desire more with a story this exceptional. Maddie Dawson must have a magical pen as she is a mega wordsmith and currently has top-billing of my list of favorites.