The Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness by Maddie Dawson

I cannot tell you how many times I have picked up A Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness by Maddie Dawson and not read it. It has been sitting on my Kindle just waiting for me to get to it, but it never sounded like what I wanted to read at the time. I was so wrong! Why did I waste so much time without these characters in my life?

Nina Popkin has just buried her much-beloved adoptive mother and is trying to get over the recent dissolution of her six month marriage when she feels an undeniable urge to find her birth mother. When she discovers she has a sister, she is anxious to build the bonds of sorority. Unfortunately, her sister Lindy doesn't feel the same. Nina is also at the beginning of a new relationship with an older man who has two children of his own. There is so much family, and not enough family all at once and Nina is doing her best to survive it all.

The premise sounded good, but it just wasn't at the top of the list. When I finally just decided to dive in, I was rewarded with a wry humor that is deserving of Olympic gold. Nina's character is hilarious! This book produced actual out-loud laughter, even in public. Nina is trying so hard to get through some of the most difficult situations in life all at once and she faces it with humor and sarcasm. A girl after my own heart. 

And yet it wasn't all belly laughs- there are heartbreaking moments, too. We learn how Nina came to be adopted, how her birth mother could give her up and why, and we learn what it has been like for Nina and Lindy to know all their lives that they were adopted. We also get to know the teenage children of Nina's new boyfriend. They are right in the midst of their own coming of age battle and are having varying degrees of success. This book is about family- the ones we're born into and the ones we make. Or, as Nina's mother would say:

You have to choose happiness. Happiness is a matter of making up your mind.