Blood and Water — Lucy McCarraher

Mo Mozart has struggled as a single mother to bring up her first two children. Now they've flown the nest, she's concentrating on maintaining a career while being a good wife to her second, younger husband, Jack, and mother to their little daughter. Mo feels she's at last getting the balance of her life right. Until, that is, Jack's twin sister asks her to help trace their birth mother. The search triggers turmoil in Mo's life: Jack becomes involved with someone else and an old vagrant woman unleashes apparently supernatural encounters. Blood and Water is the first Mo Mozart book; the second is Kindred Spirits "This easy-to-read novel belies its complex content and clever plotting that serves as a framework for an intriguing human interest story... it works as social commentary on the minestrone soup that family life is today and the women holding it together. I loved Mo's ruminations on how sex education, even private education, affects teenage pregnancies and also the adoption angle of the plot. I loved the group of female friends who are sometimes bitchy, but mostly very supportive of each other's complex lives. It becomes a page turner as you follow Mo's determination to find out the truth in several plot strands." Cate Sweeney, author, Selfish Jean