Kat Stanford is winding up on every successful career and is going into a whole new one with her mother, Iris. Except that Iris has never actually agreed to this plan and has much different ideas of her own. Kat’s father died a few months earlier, releasing Iris to leave the city to move back to the country life she’s always loved. But she’s bought a house that can only charitably be called even a fixer-upper. Kat heartily disapproves of her mother’s plans and her mother does not care.

The story winds around in lots of convoluted circles and it is much to Ms. Dennison’s credit that she ties them all up quite neatly, along with an explanation of why she bought this house. And I love her characters, even if some are a bit of a stereotype.

Iris doesn’t care what anybody thinks about anything she does and she will not be pressured into moving out of the house. She is who we all want to be when we reach her age. There are always sides to a parent their children never see, but Iris takes that a couple steps further than most parents. Fairly early on in the story, her daughter learns that dear old Mum has a secret life as an extremely popular writer of romance novels. We never think of our parents as having passion, do we? We seem to think they were born as parents, just as, as young children, we assume teachers have no existence outside of the school.
Lady Edith is the perfect grand matriarch of a rather typical to-the-manor-born family. Except that she, too, has a secret. She’s the dowager widow now, but she certainly wasn’t always. Lady Edith’s son is just waiting for her to die – or go crazy enough that he can get power of attorney over her – so he can turn the estate into an adventure land and the manor house into apartments. That power of attorney ain’t gonna happen, though, because Lady Edith’s craziness is just a put-on so she doesn’t have to argue with her son. Sort of like Hamlet: “I am but mad north northwest. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

And there are a large assortment of supporting characters.

Honestly, the character I like least is Kat. She has no imagination; she never looks beneath the surface. Therefore, she is very rigid. Besides with her mother, the place this shows up most is with her boyfriend. And I have a problem with that. I don’t like stories where a man – it’s usually the man – has such huge flaws that his girlfriend sees she cannot possibly marry him, and yet, she’s only just now seen them? After, what?, three years, in this case? Really? I can buy that whole love-is-blind bit, but come on. I just find that stretching credibility a bit.

But the book is well-written. Ms. Dennison knows how to put words together and she creates a fascinating story. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, you’re thrown another curve. I like that. This one’s worth the read.