Redeeming Eve — Nicole Bokat

Thirty-year old Eve Sterling is a '90s woman with a hankering for the 18th century. A literature scholar writing her thesis on Jane Austen, Eve lives alone in Manhattan, is eclipsed by her domineering mother, Maxie, and doubts she'll ever find a man to rival her beloved fictional heroes. When a friend sets her up with Hart -- a funny, gentle photographer -- Eve simultaneously discovers true love and loses control over her own fate.
 
Eve aims to achieve a choreographed, graceful existence, one modeled on the elegant world portrayed in Austen's novels. But, in a series of both comic and painful mishaps, she learns just how clumsy and chaotic real life can be. Irrevocably changed by marriage and motherhood, Eve struggles to reconcile contrasting allegiances: those to herself versus those to her family. And, if carving out a niche for herself while balancing the demands of a new baby isn't enough, Eve has the additional burden of living in the shadow of an imposing celebrity -- her mother! Suddenly thrust into the limelight, Maxie has been transformed into a media darling just as her own daughter's career begins to falter. Embarking on a journey to reclaim her lost sense of purpose, Eve is forced to face the toughest question of all: can she fulfill herself without severing the bonds to those she loves most?
 
By turns witty and poignant, Redeeming Eve is an accomplished, engaging first novel. Anyone who has ever risked old dreams for a richer, more complex life -- or ever longed to do so -- will identify with its very contemporary heroine.