From Publishers Weekly
Like Bridget Jones before her, Lucy Sweeney, the heroine of this pastel-jacketed bonbon of a debut, is an endearing everywoman prone to disaster. But unlike her chick lit predecessor, Lucy is a married, stay-at-home mom who gave up an impressive career as a television news producer to care for her three sons in tony northwest London. Lucy exists in a constant state of chaos (she has lost 11 credit cards in the past year; she has seven different kinds of credit card debt; and her habit of wearing pajamas to drop off her children at school has hardly gone unnoticed). But, when a flirtation with Sexy Domesticated Dad (a fellow classroom parent) threatens to develop into something more, so too does Lucy's growing sense that somewhere in the domestic maelstrom I have lost myself. Whether she will find herself again—and, in time—is the question at the center of this crackling-with-wit debut. Although the plot careens toward an over-the-top, too-neat ending, London
Times columnist Neill's delight in and empathy for her characters, her respect for the demands of domestic life and her tender evocations of motherhood more than compensate.
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From Booklist
What starts out as a harmless fantasy for Londoner Lucy Sweeney becomes a serious threat to life as she knows it. This barely coping, stay-at-home mother of three starts daydreaming about the father of one of her son's classmates, only to discover that her feelings are reciprocated. She is used to hiding bills, lost keys, and misplaced cars from her husband, not feelings for another man. When Lucy confides in her friends, they are horrified that she is willing to even entertain such a fantasy given how good a husband Tom is. Lucy's life is in constant upheaval with one crisis or another, involving children, her feelings of inferiority compared to the overachieving mothers at school, or her unwanted desire for "Sexy Domesticated Dad." The frazzled life of a full-time mom is comedic fodder for Neill, a London Times Magazine writer, as she offers a funny yet sympathetic and classically British spin on the paradoxes of women's lives. Engelmann, Patty
