If you like flawed characters who struggle with day-to-day life, quirky, engaging characters, you’ll want to meet Nina Popkin in Maddie Dawson’s The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness. Nina won my heart. I don’t know that I’d want to live with her, but it’s fun to laugh with her.

Nina Popkin always knew she was adopted. She always felt as if she didn’t quite belong. So, when her mother dies, leaving her one clue to find her birth mother, the thirty-five-year-old hopes for answers. She doesn’t expect to find she has a younger sister. And, Lindy McIntyre isn’t excited when she finds she has another sister. Lindy has her own problems with a family, a business, and anxiety. Lindy has everything Nina wants – a family. Nina has always wanted to belong.

Nina is impulsive and hopeful. So, she pushes her way into Lindy’s life. When she meets Carter Sanborn, newly divorced with two teenagers, she somehow finds herself in their lives. It’s not easy dealing with a fifteen-year-old rebellious girl, a high school senior, and an easygoing man who doesn’t seem to know as much as Nina does about his children. Even though her life is messy, Nina wants more. She wants to find the woman who as a teenager gave up two little girls.

Nina is so desperate for love, so needy, that it’s easy to fall for her. She narrates most of the story, but, at times, Lindy allows readers to see Nina as she does. Nina is offbeat, charming. And, she’s the heart, the attraction, in Maddie Dawson’s delightful novel, The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness.

Maddie Dawson’s website is www.maddiedawson.com

The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness by Maddie Dawson. Lake Union Publishing. 2016. ISBN 9781503939103 (paperback), 410p.

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FTC Full Disclosure – I received the book to review it for a journal.