(90)Imperfect Bliss by Susan Fales-Hill

Friday, July 6, 2012

Imperfect Bliss
(WARNING!: Author's website plays music!)

Publication Date: July 2, 2012
Pages: 304


Meet Elizabeth (aka Bliss) Harcourt.  She is moving home with her young daughter, Bella, after a failed marriage.  Bliss plans on  finishing up her PhD and get out as fast as possible. Hoping to minimize the damage her overbearing, society-obsessed Mother, Forsythia, will have on Bella. At first she thinks that her three sisters will be on her side in the battle against their  Mother, that is until Diana comes home with a proclamation that she will be starring in a reality show called The Virgin and they will mostly be filming at the home they all share.  Will she be able to avoid the production circus going on in their home and will  she be able to keep Bella from believing that every woman goes on a reality show to find her husband?  And if her own drought ever ends, will it be with the sexy producer or her handsome colleague?

The Harcourt Sisters are four very different women with four very different ideas of what it means to be a "modern woman."  In a way that is very reminiscent of of Jane Austen, Susan Fales-Hill, has created a world that almost seems to be pulled right out of your television.  Forsythia's over-the-top behavior actually reminds me a bit of the "Wicked Stepmother" in Cinderella, her obsession with the Royals is almost cartoonish, just look at what she did when Will married Kate!  But the Sister's themselves could be loosely compared to the Khardashian's.  Stunningly beautiful, with a mixed race background, they behave like any sisters would, even with the strain of The Virgin making their relationships difficult.

Overall I enjoyed Imperfect Bliss. While I wish I could say that Bliss was my favorite character, the reality of it is, she is the character I wanted to shake silly the least.  Her mother was just simply atrocious, as was Diana's and Charlotte's behavior at times.  In the end though, having The Virgin, come into the lives of the Harcourt women turned out to be a good thing, for by the end of the book, Diana wasn't the only Harcourt woman to have found a mate...

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