“Maybe your life is a well-orchestrated series of elegant vignettes, with perfect photo opportunities every ten minutes, but if you’re anything like the rest of us then you’re lurching from one near-disaster to the next, crossing your legs every time you cough so you don’t pee your pants after having had four children.”

This was a brutally blunt, laugh out loud riot of a read. This is by far one of the most relatable books I’ve read in a long time and I truly think every reader will say “oh, I’ve been there.” 

The story starts with Frances driving the neighbourhood kids to school in the daily carpool, and let me tell you Frances is someone I want to have a glass of wine with. Her inner thoughts are just absolute top tier, but she doesn’t let a lot of those thoughts out. She’s saint Frances. She’s that mom, the one who helps, the one who handles everything for everyone. After one of the neighbour kids forgets a bag for school, Frances being the do-it-all mom she is, returns to that home to get the bag. Enter Frances stumbling upon Anne, her neighbour, partaking in some early morning shenanigans with a man who is definitely not her husband. Things get very chaotic as the other neighbours get a whiff of the local scandal. 

What unfurls is an interconnect story of how one affair reverberates through all four families. As one marriage is imploding publicly, cracks begin to show in the other families and their own drama is bubbling to the surface. 

Waxman does a phenomenal job writing laugh-out-loud scenes while balancing some heavier topics that many parents and seemingly happily married people are forced to confront. 

At the end of the day, the grass is just as patchy next door as yours is, nobody uses a coaster, but if you’re the neighbour who would vacuum the lawn while drama is going down at the house across the way, I’ll bring the wine and we can be friends.