Belinda "Benny" Bernstein is single, living in L. A., and happy with her life. Until she receives a telephone call from her mother, who thinks she has Chlamydia, which turns out to be a case of poison oak. Soon she receives another call from mom who tells Benny that she was in a car accident with Benny's sister Jami. Now Benny is faced with having to leave L. A. and Mickey, the guy she met in the grocery store, and head back home to Virginia to take care of her family.

Upon arriving at her mother's house, she finds that mom has taken to hoarding junk and has no job and no car, Jami has begun housing all the stray animals she can find, and things are just a complete and utter mess. Benny hires a handyman, Zack, to help her clean the place up and things start heating up between the two. At the same time, Jami is following a path of self-destruction, hanging with the wrong crowd and dating the wrong men, and mom, well, she's just dating as many men as she can find.

While trying to fix her family and make things normal again, Benny also has to deal with Mickey, still in L. A. and dating other women, and Zack, who is actually married.

This is your typical self-discovery story, in which your heroine learns to find her own happiness while trying to interfere with everyone else's. The bright spot in this book was in the first fifteen pages when Benny was having the Chlamydia conversation with her mother. It was the funniest conversation that I've seen in print in a long time. So much so, that I had to read the entire conversation aloud to more than one person. The story was interesting and fast-paced with no real slow spots. Well developed characters and witty conversation, along with real-life, nobody's-perfect, characters made for a fun read.

-----------------------
Publisher: Downtown Press (August 1, 2006)
ISBN: 1416503854
Buy the Book