This would be a good book for a book club. It would be a fun summer read as well. ( )

Every time I pick up a book about dysfunctional families with three sisters, I look forward to seeing whether or not it reflects on myself and my own two sisters. In this book, the answer is no.

Contemporary fiction and I usually do not get along well; perhaps because so little of it feels relatable to me (much like contemporary film and its lack of representation). In this particular novel -- the setting, the 30k diamond engagement rings, the traveling across the world -- it all seems over the top and a bit contrived. As another reviewer commented, "quirky for the sake of quirkiness." ( )

What a fun read! It's about family, and secrets, and family secrets. I think it would even make a really good movie. Not a bad way to start my reading goal for 2016. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyable escapist read. The characters are quirky and fun and the high concept was delightful. ( )

Bridget Asher is one of the pen names of Julianna Baggott, a favorite author of mine. I like the characters she constructs and her insights into the human condition. In fact, my very favorite middle grade book is by her (The Prince of Fenway Park) as well as my very favorite post-apocalyptic dystopia trilogy (Pure, Fuse, and Burn).

This novel is about a very quirky matriarchal family, the Rockwells. The mother, Augusta, never married, and her three girls have no idea who fathered them. Augusta told them their father was a spy, but they didn’t believe her.

It begins in 1985 at their family home in Ocean City, New Jersey, just as a storm is coming through. Augusta has issued her daughters, Esme, Liv, and Ru (short for Ruby), batons to help “conduct” the storm. She told them:

“Storms are one way to define people. There are those who love storms, those who fear them, and those who love them because they fear them.”

Clearly, this will be a theme of the story, and will come into play later as we learn what happened to the father of the girls.

The plot next moves to 2012, when Hurricane Sandy is bearing down upon them. But it is not the only storm in each of their lives. Esme, the oldest, is now 44 and married with a teenage daughter Atty (named for Atticus Finch). Esme and Atty have just found out that Esme’s husband Doug left them while on a trip to Paris. Liv, 40, has been married three times and is researching a possible fourth. Ru, the youngest, is a best-selling author and is in Vietnam trying to get inspiration for another book.

We then move forward again, eight months after the hurricane. Another storm is coming, and this time it will upend all of their lives.

Navigating the various emotional storms that besiege each of the characters, we learn about their rather unique attitudes toward love, including the love most like a passenger pigeon, according to Liv: something rare and precious and thought to be extinct: i.e., love that lasts a lifetime.

The book ends with an Epilogue that reminded me very much of the ending of the iconic movie “American Graffiti” with the “where are they now” information that scrolls across the screen during the credits.

Discussion: Atty functions as the “Greek chorus” of this book with her hilarious tweets commenting on every situation. But all of the women are witty, self-deprecating, and sympathetic in spite of many character flaws.

Some of my favorite moments:

When Esme finds out Doug left her while on a trip to Paris, she wonders:

“Would they be divorcing via Skype - all disjointed, their voices not quite synced to the movement of their mouths? Would she divorce her husband of seventeen years like a badly dubbed Asian monster movie?”

Atty, a master of clever hashtags, also reacts to the pending divorce in her live-tweets: “Will my mother be on the market one day? #ew”

Liv has guided her life by an effort to escape “the unbearable weight of the ordinary . . . " She looks for potential husbands by scanning newspaper engagement announcements, explaining why the men in them make good prospects for someone else to snag them:

“None of them are [happy]. Their fiancées have changed on them almost overnight. . . These men are being forced to make decisions and no one cares about their opinions. They’re being railroaded into buying things they don’t want to buy, arrange people’s seating in ways they don’t want to arrange, pick from samples of food they don’t want to eat, list their friends in a hierarchy, cut cousins off lists. They’re spending more time with their in-laws. . . .They’re dying inside. . . . [This is] 'the quiet desperation of weddings. . . .'"

And I loved Ru's reaction to the chaos at the end:

“Teddy was back. Her father was back. Cliff was coming. It was like an attack of men. What did it mean? She didn’t want to think of men. She wanted something soothing, something simple….”

Evaluation: I found this story delightful. Unlike so many stories about dysfunctional families, there wasn’t a hateful character in the bunch. One could learn a lot from the way each of these women pushed her way past the storms of life through wit, love, and increasing self-awareness, no matter how reluctantly acknowledged. ( )