Book: Small Pleasures

 Book: Small Pleasures

Author: Clare Chambers

Pages: 368

This is my 200th read for the year

This is the story of Jean.  She is a single woman who works for a newspaper and cares for her ailing mother.  One day a story comes across her desk where a woman claims she had a virgin birth.  Jean asks if she can follow up on the story and meets Gretchen who has a 10 year old daughter.  She was never with a man, but became pregnant while convalescing from rheumatoid arthritis in a convent.  Gretchen is now married to a man named Howard who has accepted Margaret - her daughter - as his own.  Jean starts to spend time with the whole family and quickly becomes intertwined in their daily lives as the story unfolds.  

This book was just okay.  I found a lot of the story "convenient" as it went along to pull Jean and Howard together.  It just went off the rails just to further their story together and I found it dumb.  I could see it coming and it was more than half of the story which was a shame.  And don't get me started on the ending - just awful.  

Stars: 2