Heads or Tails
by Leslie A. Gordon
Genre: Women's Fiction
189 pages
Goodreads
Amazon
Hillary can’t believe the words her best friend Margot just uttered. Deeply committed to her devoutly childless marriage, Hillary doesn’t know the first thing about infants – and has zero interest in learning. But Margot’s post-partum depression has reached a dangerous peak. With the baby a sperm donor production and Margot’s mother Jean suffering from Parkinson’s, there’s no one else. And for reasons nobody knows, Hillary owes both Margot and Jean.
Suddenly, Hillary is forced to bring the baby from Manhattan to San Francisco, where she works as general contractor for the city’s hottest restoration company. Right away, the baby’s arrival exposes hairline cracks in Hillary’s marriage to Jesse and stirs up latent resentment towards her parents, who’d been too overcome with grief to ever parent her properly. Before long, Hillary finds herself doing all kinds of things she vowed never to do, including things with her handsome and mysterious neighbor Abe. And then the question arises: should this arrangement become permanent?
Fans of Jodi Picoult, Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner will be drawn to the fresh premise of HEADS OR TAILS, a story that explores themes of friendship and loyalty and what happens when your core identity is challenged. Perfect for book clubs, the Kindle edition concludes with questions for discussion.
The gripping second novel from the author of Cheer: A Novel, HEADS OR TAILS will stay with you long after you’ve read the final page.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
“At some point,
we reach a place in life when we’re sure there will be no more surprises. The time is different for everyone, but the
feeling – a settling, a resignation – is the same. We know everyone we’re going to know. We may encounter new clients or neighbors,
the kinds of people who come and go, the kind that don’t last. But eventually, we come to understand that
the old flame is not going to return decades later, and that no one truly
revolutionary is going to cross our paths.
Our people are our people.”
“I was
essentially raised by default by an African-American woman from Alabama. Virginia was our live-in housekeeper and,
truth be told, my primary care-giver, even though that wasn’t part of her job
description. While she was hired to keep
house and prepare meals, she obviously had had some effect on me from the
earliest days. This was evidenced by my
first complete sentence: “Lawdhammercy Jesus, I done lost my shoe.”
“Secretly, I
was convinced that Rebecca became a therapist so she could legitimately tell
people what to do.”
My Review:
Against her
better judgement and knowing full well that it would greatly upset her husband,
Hillary agrees to take on total childcare of her best friend’s baby, due to
dire circumstances. This causes
considerable strain and upheaval on her household, marriage, employment, and
finances. While thrust into the
unfamiliar tasks of caring for an infant, she filters through memories of her
own childhood as well as working through her feelings toward her cold and distant
parents. Caring for the child proved to
be a life-altering experience for her, not just due to the energy and physical tasks
involved, but in the emotional connections made, remembered, and now better understood. Self and family revelations shook her foundation
and significant insights were gained into her past, which fostered change in
her present and required her to restructure her long held beliefs and assumptions. Heads
or Tails is thoughtfully written with sparkles of wry humor. The story is insightful as well as
entertaining.
Empress DJ
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