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Have you checked your family bank account lately? What about your relationship account? These are two questions that the Mama Lit July Book Club read, Mrs. Perfect, poses to the reader through the horrible twist of fate facing its lead character. The follow up to author Jane Porter’s novel Odd Mom Out, Mrs. Perfect follows the life of that novel’s nemesis, Taylor Young: the Super Mom of all Stay-at-Home Moms in a posh Seattle suburb.

We begin by examining Taylor Young’s life, focusing on the external aspects that glimmer like a glossy magazine cover: her days are spent chairing a multi-million dollar benefit auction for her daughter’s school, sipping gin & tonics with friends poolside at their elite country club, wearing expensive designer outfits, living in a lakeside mansion she helped custom design, driving a Lexus SUV. The conversations among Taylor and her girlfriends are plastic, the expectations to live life more extravagantly than others high. But we all know that behind the rich lifestyle lurks actual human beings, and this is where Porter takes the reader deeper, to a place where we can all relate, as moms, as wives, as women.

Taylor Young’s life basically gets hit by a Mack truck carrying surprises about her marriage, her family finances, and brings up thought-to-be buried past relationships (her mother) and brings forth unexpected new relationships (nemesis Marta Zinsser). While some of the scenarios play a little OC-style-dramatic for my taste, the heart of the novel is solid and its message clear: as individuals, we are all much more valuable than what others may perceive our worth to be.

Original theme? Perhaps not, but Porter with her ever present mirror pointed at today’s modern woman thankfully doesn’t leave us there. She takes us beyond the usual “money can’t buy happiness” message and through Taylor Young’s mistakes, family secrets, and her eventual journey to strength and rediscovery, Porter reminds the reader why and how money can’t buy happiness, and also how it is never too late for women to reclaim their own power, their own identities, and in doing so, thus strengthening the family unit as a whole. In today’s uncertain economy, I found this messaging to be extremely timely: Taylor Young may be your next door neighbor, your best friend, your mother, or yourself.

Porter always does a fabulous job of creating characters with flaws that most women can relate to, and strengths that most women aim to achieve. In Odd Mom Out, I completely related with Marta Zinsser’s fierce independent streak and her disdain for stereotypes. In Mrs. Perfect, I found myself relating to Taylor Young’s moments of questioning: what am I doing? Who have I — who have we, as husband and wife — become? Where are we going, and what do we want our children to take away from these life lessons? Porter more than any other female author I have encountered paints such an accurate portrait of today’s modern mother, with such aching love for her kids and such conflict within herself. More than the typical mommy wars books, Porter manages to rise above the stay-at-home versus working mom drama and brings the reader to a higher plateau of questioning, one on which we are all mothers trying to do the best for our families, merely asking ourselves — not society — how we best want to live our own lives. I can’t help but read her novels and end with an “I am woman! Hear me roar!” feeling — in a good way, of course.

Mrs. Perfect is about remembering to nurture the independent, intelligent, highly capable woman inside all of us mothers. It’s a reminder that we are in our relationships together, not separately, and that our relationships with our spouses and partners need tending to as much as our relationships with our children and our friends. Mrs. Perfect is the perfect summer read to remind us all that we are truly capable of moving mountains, determining destinies and changing lives– especially our own.

Imagine Gossip Girl grew up, Miranda Hobbes became a stay-at-home mom, and Juno kept her baby. Mix these characters’ worlds together and you’re hanging out with Hannah Allen, the sympathetic heroine of Momzillas.

Add the slick, stylized tone of chick-lit classics like Shopaholic Ties the Knot and Baby Proof, and the resulting literary concoction is Jill Kargman’s Momzillas: It’s a Jungle out there on Park Avenue, Baby.

At-home mother Hannah, her investment-banker husband Josh, and their 2-year-old daughter Violet have relocated from San Francisco to New York City’s Upper East Side. After some prodding from her materialistic mother-in-law, Hannah loads Violet into the stroller and runs smack into the most vicious strain of mothers in America: the Momzillas of Manhattan.

Chronicling this stay-at-home mom’s move to moneyed Manhattan and her struggles to fit in with a gossipy clique of over-achieving mothers, Momzillas is an easy-to-read paperback pleasure that feels guilty but never actually induces the mommy guilt. As a less-than-perfect, all-too-human mother, Hannah is definitely no one’s martyr even though she feels an outsider’s pain.

Although the heroines and villains of Momzillas are stay-at-home moms, Kargman writes sensitively about the choices all new moms must make. She diplomatically covers the maternal controversies of breastfeeding, childcare, returning to work, and how much to spend on a little one’s toys, clothes and entertainment.

Many of Hannah’s days and nights in New York are lonely and depressing as she rides the rollercoaster of emotions that goes along with trying to find your place after uprooting your family and moving across the country. But Kargman offers a light, entertaining touch, with as much pop-culture lingo as a movie like Juno, and even includes a glossary to explain the native tongue.

New mothers across a range of geographical and socioeconomic levels will appreciate Momzillas, for the same reasons that a diverse horde of millions relate to Sex and the City’s aspirational characters.

Of course, the Momzillas bubble that Kargman has re-created does seem a bit too carefully constructed at times. Conveniently, all of the main characters are only children, and more than once I asked myself why Hannah doesn’t just pick up the phone and call her own mom in Seattle for sympathy when the going gets tough.

But overall, this glossy glimpse into malicious mommyhood is a light-hearted summer read, a pure pop confection of playground frenemies, preschool anxieties, and perfectly pressed professional nannies.

The transition to motherhood is as sticky as tar. Nobody tells it as straight as Brett Paesel in her rendition of the adjustment from breezy freedom to the chaotic commitment of children.

Paesel’s account of the sleepless nights, the crying jags (both baby and mom!), and the need for mom-camaraderie is honest, hilarious, touching at times, and a bit crass. The book is mostly focused on Paesel’s struggles with new motherhood through frequent gatherings with her tribe of mom pals. As they gather at the bar to gain sanity and respite from the toil of their child-rearing days, the women provide a sounding board and comfort to each other.

Paesel uses witty humor to cope with pregnancy, miscarriage, adoption, and even the absurd acceptance rituals of exclusive preschools. The weekly bar gatherings underscore the need for community at a time when so many new moms feel isolated. If moms who read this book haven’t yet found their “tribe” of mom friends, they will certainly step up their search upon witnessing how Paesel’s group offers much-needed empathy and support.

There is a slightly annoying “ Hollywood ” pervasiveness in the book; even her OB/Gyn was met through acting classes. (What was he taking acting classes for? “Mrs. Green, you look fantastic—I hardly notice the 70 pounds you’ve put on during pregnancy!”). However, there are enough clever gems of humor to make up for this shortfall, such as reversing the “Expected Milestones” chart from what the baby should be able to do by a certain age to what the mother should be able to do by the time the baby reaches a particular age.

I have to say, I’m glad I read this book after having children. At times, Paesel makes motherhood sound so dismal that her account might have dissuaded me. Fortunately, I could enjoy her humorous challenges of parenting because I know they are off-set by as many joyous moments.

Read it, relish the humor…just don’t pass it along to that friend who is on the fence about having kids unless you are hoping to curb the world population.

Before commencing with the accolades for Jenny Gardner’s new book, “Sleeping With Ward Cleaver”, let me say that Jenny is always welcome to have dinner at our house. I can’t imagine how someone who wrote this book wouldn’t be exceptional funny (like Molly Shannon), bright (like Madeleine what’s her name Secretary of State), and perhaps, even a little sarcastic. Just my cup of tea for a dinner guest!

Jenny’s book is a romantic comedy about a working mother who find herself and her husband again through all the paranoia and delusion that we all experience as parents and spouses. Luckily, Jenny’s book helps us all see the humor in the situation. The book is a well written and easy read.

The first chapter had me in stitches. Children puking. Planned and dreaded sex nights. Poorly trained pets. Poop. Oversexed single friends. And a husband who behaves like Ward Cleaver. A little something for all of us to relate to in our own lives.

This is book is the “Bridget Jones Diary” for all of us married and harried mommies! And perhaps, a good gift to give to our younger and single girlfriends. It’s a gentle and humorous way to give them a glimpse of what’s to come . . .

What I love the most about this book is the ending. It left me understanding myself and my husband a little more. I just wanted to give him one of those long and sumptuous hugs that say, “I understand.”

And at the end I was left understanding the delicate dance in romantic relationships a little more. “Sleeping With Ward Cleaver” was the perfect romantic comedy for a 30-something Mommy, who still wants to be a sexy and sassy gal, despite the spit up encrusted on all of my clothing. I can only hope Rob Reiner and friends, will put this sassy book on the big screen!

The title alone of this book would likely attract most mothers: I believe the majority of us feel like the “odd mom out,” if not on a regular basis then at least from time to time., whether we are the tattooed mom at the kids country club benefit or we are the big city mom suddenly thrust into country living. The ability to relate to this book already exists in its title, and readers will be pleased that the accessibility of this novel easily extends throughout every single one of its pages. Odd Mom Out is the best mama book I have read in a long time: engaging, smart, sharply written and sometimes so funny you may giggle out loud and accidentally wake your sleeping spouse as you read by night light.

Seattle-based author Jane Porter is a single mom of two young boys. I had the honor of meeting her at the NW Women’s Show in Portland, Oregon in October. She is an incredible woman, and I wish I had the chance to speak with her more. She’s one of those women that you just want to be able to sit down and have coffee with and listen to her talk, knowing that somehow you will be smarter, more interesting, and definitely happier and more energized just by the simple act of being in her presence. I gathered all this from about a three-minute conversation with her — she’s that powerful. And so naturally, I was eager to dive into her novel.

In Odd Mom Out, Porter introduces us to Marta, independent, entrepreneur ad exec and single mom to nine-year-old Eva. After a traumatic break up while living in New York, Marta chose to become a single mom thanks to a sperm donor and raise her daughter on her own. She and Eva left New York for Seattle, where Marta spent her childhood, in order to be closer to her ailing mother. Life in a posh Seattle suburb is very different than life in New York City, and even after two years of being back, Marta, with her long hair, cargo pants, paint-speckled shoes and deep love of motorcycles, has never minded being an independent gal, with no ties to the other moms in the ‘hood. But suddenly Eva has made it her life mission to “help” her mother fit in with the country club mothers, just as Eva has been trying to fit in and get the popular girls (mainly Mean Girl #1, Jemma, whose mother’s name is of course Taylor and is of course the #1 parent volunteer) to like her since they moved. Then there is the fact that Marta hasn’t dated - let alone had sex - in the entire 10 years since Eva’s birth (everytime I read this I thought “holy s#2%!”). Of course there is a yummy male character involved who challenges Marta as much as she likes to challenge societal norms, but I won’t spoil the fun by writing more about him.

What I most enjoy about Odd Mom Out is that it is a love story that breathes 100-percent authenticity. So much more than a typical “new mom in town feels left out among the snobby suburbanite moms” tale, at heart it is about the soulful, aching love that a mother feels for her daughter. It is about a mother who will do anything and everything to make her daughter feel happy, confident, loved. I connected with Porter’s words more so than I have with any other novel written this year; she has penned the love we feel for our children so eloquently, so simply, that I never realized no author has ever been able to do so to this extent until reading this book. It makes me smile.

Porter writes as if she is inside our heads, with excerpts such as this:
“Stop the clock, I think, freeze everything right now. I want to remember this–this second, this moment–forever. I want to remember how lucky I was, how lucky I am.

And I want Eva safe, I don’t want her to struggle, and I don’t want to worry about her so much.”

And this excerpt:

“…I mean it in that deep, bone-aching way where I can’t imagine myself without her, can’t imagine how I’d get through a day if anything ever happened to her.

Do other mothers ever torture themselves this way? Do all mothers love their children so much that the love brings you to your knees?”

Yes, dear Jane/Marta, other mothers do. And I thank you for being able to mirror my own thoughts and emotions in Odd Mom Out. If there is a greater modern love story written in this decade that better captures the love between mother and child, I can’t recall it. And I dare you to find it. In the meantime, go read Odd Mom Out. And then go hug your children tight!