A very smart, soulful, compelling, elegantly written domestic novel about a wedged-together family, and what can go wrong when teenage children decide they have minds (and hormones) of their own. -Nick Hornby

A spry and accomplished comedy of manners. -The New York Times Book Review

They’ve chosen the one thing that will make our family life impossible. It’s genius really, when you think about it. It’s the perfect sabotage.

Julia Alden has fallen deeply, unexpectedly in love. American obstetrician James is everything she didn’t know she wanted–if only her teenage daughter, Gwen, didn’t hate him so much. Uniting two households is never easy, but when Gwen turns for comfort to James’s seventeen-year-old son, Nathan, the consequences will test her mother’s loyalty and threaten all their fragile new happiness.

This is a moving and powerful novel about the modern family: about starting over; about love, guilt, and generosity; about building something beautiful amid the mess and complexity of what came before. It is a story about standing by the ones we love, even while they make mistakes. We would give anything to make our children happy. But how much should they ask?