Family for Beginners by Sarah Morgan.

The blurb states:

When Flora falls in love with Jack, suddenly she’s not only handling a very cranky teenager, but she’s also living in the shadow of Jack’s perfect, immortalised wife, Becca. Every summer, Becca and Jack would holiday with Becca’s oldest friends and Jack wants to continue the tradition, so now Flora must face a summer trying to live up to Becca’s memory, with not only Jack’s daughter looking on, but with Becca’s best friends judging her every move…

The more Flora tries to impress everyone, the more things go horribly wrong…but as the summer unfolds, Flora begins pushing her own boundaries, and finding herself in a way that she never thought she needed to.

And she soon learns that families come in all shapes and sizes.

My thoughts.

I make no secret of the fact that I am a huge fan of Sarah Morgan books and this one has more than lived up to my expectations – after The Christmas Sisters this is definitely my second favourite of her books. I love the way Sarah always explores the intricacies of family relationships and puts women at the centre of her stories – I now see that this is a theme in all her books and I love it. Although the book blurb primarily mentions Flora as the protagonist, I found myself becoming much more engaged in the stories of Izzy, and Clare in particular…..in fact I was desperate to discover more about Clare’s back story with so many snippets given throughout the story…please Sarah Morgan write a book with her as the focus!! I felt there was a very natural progression of the family dynamic and relationship between Flora and Izzy, which definitely made it all the more believable.

This was a brilliant, well-thought out and excellently written book – it has definitely got a place on my shelf of books I would read again.