The Other Mothers' Club

by Samantha Baker

Overview

“Brilliant….Stepmothers, stepfathers, stepchildren: all, I think, will find amusement and comfort in its pages.”
—Nigella Lawson

 

“I really, really loved it.”

—Marian Keyes

 

You can choose your family—but are you sure you want to? That’s the question Samantha Baker poses in The Other Mothers’ Club—a fresh, funny, and touching fictional look at stepmotherhood, an often-misrepresented aspect of female life. Join The Other Mothers’ Club and enjoy hours of supremely satisfying reading…even if you’re not a stepmother.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061840357
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/22/2010
Pages:	411
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Samantha Baker has edited some of the UK's most popular magazines, including J-17, Company, and Cosmopolitan UK. She is editor in chief of Red, and lives between Winchester, Hampshire, and central London with her husband and grown-up stepson.

Editorial Reviews

Soon after Eve, the heroine of this overbusy debut, plunges into stepmother territory, she realizes she's in over her head. She turns to best friend and single mother Clare for advice, and the help sessions soon mushroom into the Stepmothers' Support Group. Members include Clare's younger sister, Lily, who is dating an older man with a toddler; Melanie, who wants a family of her own and is recovering from a bad breakup with a man who didn't want kids; and Mandy, who is trying to juggle the blending of two families full of teenagers. Baker partially succeeds at polishing the image of the much-maligned stepmother, thanks to strong characters like Eve and Clare. But the glut of personalities at play between club members and their families and friends proves too much for Baker to handle, and as she loses the battle to develop even some of players central to the increasingly convoluted plot, contrived developments and uneven storytelling become ever more apparent. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Sometimes, a book can be such a brilliant idea, you can’t believe no one has done it before: ‘The Stepmothers’ Support Group’ by Sam Baker is a page-turning case in point. Stepmothers, stepfathers, stepchildren: all, I think, will find amusement and comfort in its pages.” — Nigella Lawson on The Stepmothers' Support Group

From the Publisher

Sometimes, a book can be such a brilliant idea, you can’t believe no one has done it before: ‘The Stepmothers’ Support Group’ by Sam Baker is a page-turning case in point. Stepmothers, stepfathers, stepchildren: all, I think, will find amusement and comfort in its pages.

Nigella Lawson on The Stepmothers' Support Group