Based on the story premises alone, which was what I enjoyed this book, this was a 3-star (good), but I just had to dock that 1-star to make it a 2-star.
Alright, single mom at almost 40, moving to the (somewhat) suburbs, meeting new friends. That was all very exciting. I might have been a trifle annoyed at Molly’s insistence on Max’s visiting the kid “with no strings”, but maybe that’s a thing (and I wouldn’t know)
I will admit I did not see the ending coming that way. It was a pleasant surprise, of course, but I also doubt the storybook-esque “it will all be fine here onwards!” Reflects the real world.
But anyway, the story was cute while it lasted.
HOWEVER, I just had to dock that one star for the (if I recall correctly) 2 typos, the dialogue flow, and the gazillion other mis-punctuations.
I’m not going back to hunt for the typos, but there were 2.
The dialogue flow? Much of the conversations don’t say who said it. There’s no “ ‘oh it’s great!’ Molly said, and ‘yes it is!’ Replied Izzie.” It was fine when the dialogues were short, but when it was going on, I needed a pencil to mark down who said what.
Now, mis-punctuations, I’m even ignoring my dislike of using single quotation marks for dialogue. I’m more used to double quotation marks for dialogues, but I’ll let that pass. The most annoying part of this book is all the MISPLACED quotation marks. A conversation could have ended but the closing quotation missed. A conversation started without the opening quotation mark. Heck there were parts where there was an opening quotation but it was not speech nor dialogue. This was the most painful part of this book.