Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this novel by Cecily von Ziegesar - buckle up and prepare for a ride on the crazy side!  4 stars for an interesting character study.

The book is centered around 4 families living in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn.  There is writer Roy Clarke, his wife, Wendy, and teenage daughter, Shy.  Stuart Little is a former famous musician, living with wife, Mandy, and son, Ted.  Peaches is a nurse in Ted's school, married to Greg, with teenage son, Liam.  Then there are the artist couple, Tupper and Elizabeth.  These 4 families become very intertwined as we watch each of them go through their days, struggling for meaning and purpose, working on their relationships.  But it all adds up to some kind of funny/crazy!

I loved some of these characters - basically all the women were so relatable in their own ways.  Mandy was a hoot.  Feeling like her only purpose was to be the cheerleader in Stuart's life, she ends up faking a serious illness to explain why she stays in bed all day.  Be sure and guard your food delivery boxes!  Peaches wanted to be a drummer/writer and ended up being a nurse to help support the family.  Now she spends the days combing through kids' hair for lice.  She has a crush on Stuart from her younger days.  Wendy persuaded her family to move from London to NY where she grew up - now she's struggling at her magazine job and lying to Roy.  Shy is also trying to fit in her new world but is definitely an outsider.

Each of these stories winds in and out of each other.  I thought it was a funny, exaggerated view of what we all go through as women in life's various stages.