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Like slipping into a treasured sweater, this book will wrap you up in layers of emotion, familiarity and warmth, as you come to know, and love, the characters in this book.

Sisters Liane, Ilsa, and Fiona, each in their thirties, are the children of Helen, a successful folk-singer of the sixties. Each of the sisters are the product of different relationships of Helen, none of which have resulted in the long-term presence of a father in any of their lives. In Fiona’s case, in fact, although she is very familiar with who her father is, (a famous rock musician), they have never actually met. This lack of fatherhood and its outcomes informs each of the sister’s inner worlds. Each have, as a result, developed their own uniquely painful vulnerabilities, insecurities and fears, along with a savagely complicated emotional dependency on each other. Anxious Liane, flighty Ilsa and perfection-seeking Fiona struggle in their own way with both the fleetingness and the fierceness of their love for their mates, and the concept, colored by their bohemian upbringing, of motherhood.

Loving, leaving, lying, hoping, cheating, yearning, fearing and hurting – in this story each woman, including Helen, opens her heart to us in her own third person POV – in chapters that read like emotional vignettes, each unveiling one more layer of complicated chaos that captures the push and pull and ultimately the tenuous nature of modern-day love beautifully, as the family bonds that hold them together wiggle and sway, yet ultimately hold these fractured lives together.

I couldn’t have loved this book more deeply, a moving and beautifully rendered look at love and trust and promises – given, lacking, or critically broken – and what, if at all even possible, “mating for life” could actually entail.

A fabulous book-club read, this reader will be looking to enjoy more of the works of this wonderful author.