Oh the Mother and Child Reunion is Only a Motion Away

Mother/daughter relationships, right? You can write whole books about them, and Sarah Bird took a slice from the familial angsty pie for The Gap Year. Cam and her daughter Aubrey were once very close. Cam’s husband left them when Aubrey was a baby to join a religious group similar to Scientology. And everything was going fine. Until it wasn’t. Now Aubrey barely speaks to Cam, and Cam has no idea how to get her baby back from her seemingly possessive jock boyfriend Tyler. And maybe we as readers would never know either, except we get a second story line from Aubrey’s perspective taking place about one year before Cam’s story starts. And although Aubrey’s distancing from her mom is nothing more dramatic than Aubrey becoming her own person, the story is no less interesting. The chapters go back and forth from the two women’s perspectives, and the small cliff hangers ending each chapter definitely kept the plot flowing. I kept thinking, okay, I’ll just finish Cam’s next chapter, and then I’ll stop. But then something interesting would happen to Aubrey and I wouldn’t want to stop. Bird’s writing is current, funny, and moving. We get an ending that is happy but still realistic. A fun read if you’re looking for a modern family story with humor and some great characters.