frogqueen 's review for:

You Only Call When You're in Trouble by Stephen McCauley

4.25

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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• a woman going through a title ix investigation, her free-spirited mother, and their uncle/brother who's pretty much willing to drop his life for them cope with some Big Life Changes
• this was a really sweet, heartfelt book about a family and their perhaps less than ideal dynamic
• each of the three main characters is deeply flawed but we wind up loving them anyway
• i loved the sense of humor- very subtle, not afraid to poke fun at the characters but in a loving way, the way you'd gently rib an eccentric aunt
• the ending was great -
  nobody got exactly what they wanted, but all have hope for the future
• i think if there's a problem with this it's that the middle is a bit slow and i thought the characters of molly and fiona were somewhat odd additions to the cast
• also i was waiting for there to be a big reveal about molly having some ulterior motives but no, she just kind of deus-ex-machinas into the book to help cecily

**review of an arc i received via goodreads giveaway**