In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Emilia Greenleaf’s life is full of mixed blessings. She’s a Harvard Law School-grad who manages to land a job at a prestigious firm and marry her soul mate, Jack. However, in order to do it, she had to break up Jack’s marriage to Carolyn and become stepmother to Jack and Carolyn’s five-year-old precocious son William every Wednesday afternoon. Carolyn’s obsessive and disparaging remarks on Emilia’s job of stepmotherhood are barely manageable, but things come to a head when William pointedly asks Emilia why she doesn’t sell the old baby things of her 2-day old daughter Isabel who died from SIDS. Can Emilia learn to overcome her grief for her lost child, heal the rift in her marriage, and finally bond with her husband’s son? Author Ayelet Waldman weaves an entertaining and oftentimes humorous tale that hits at the heart of true emotion.

Read The Guardian book review here.