Review - Bad Mothers United by Kate Long

Another brilliant, sure-to-be bestselling book from the fabulous Kate Long.

Ten years after The Bad Mothers' Handbook, the girls return in Bad Mothers United.

 

After the death of Nan, mom Charlotte and grandmother Karen are both struggling to get on with their lives in very different ways. 

While Karen has agreed to take on a day-to-day and week-to-week role of looking after Charlotte's son, she is finding it difficult, and feeling a little dumped upon as she doesn't really have a life of her own.  When her new and good-looking neighbour moves in, she thinks she has found a great friend.

 

Charlotte is at university away from home, studying for her degree, which is an opportunity that her mom desperately wants her not to miss out on like she did and will do anything within her power to make sure that it happens. Charlotte does see her son as often as she possibly can, but while spending all her time at university feels that she is a bad mother and has to adapt to a differnt life without her son. 

The Bad Mothers Handbook was a totally brilliant book. I read it at the time and thought it was completely fabulous. This sequel is just as brilliant as the first, if not just a tiny bit more fantastic.

Charlotte and Karen are obviously older in this book and have both matured physically and mentally but are not particularly wiser and they both eventually realise that  if they stopped rubbing each other up the wrong way and actually worked together as a team they could start to enjoy their relationship.

A mother/daughter bond is a very special one and there was one particular part in the book where I sat and sobbed.  It broke my heart to think that Karen was enjoying her grandson and reminded me once again that my amazing mom did not get to carry out that brilliant job with my gorgeous son as we lost her a year before he was born. 

The relationship and arrangement that the ladies had in place was a tough one for all concerned and was certainly an interesting one. The message that shone through for me is that a mother loves her child whatever happens and that working together rather than against each other can make the most out of a situation for all concerned. 

I am a huge fan of Kate Long and I owe her a great deal of gratitude for being one of the first authors who made this wonderful hobby of reviewing books a reality for me.

She is funny, she is deep and she is a superb author who writes extremely compelling and warm-hearted novels that you never want to put down. The dynamics that occur between the mothers and daughters in this and in fact all of her books are true to life and believable. 

The characters have come a long way since the last book in a way that makes you feel like you truly have gone through the journey personally with them.  She captures their emotions perfectly.

I would think that most mothers can relate to the majority of this book.

As this is a sequel, I will wait with baited breath for (hopefully) the third in the series as I could continue to read about these characters who have become my friends, forever.

I was first introduced to Kate Long when I reviewed Mothers & Daughters which was one of the very first books I ever reviewed. My review of that can be found here.   I also reviewed Mothers and Daughters and that review can be found here.

I was delighted that Kate agreed to do an interview with me, talking about her writing, and that interview can be found here.

Kate Long is the author of The Bad Mothers Handbook, Swallowing Grandma, Queen Mum, The Daughters Game, Mothers and Daughters and Before She Was Mine. Kate was born and raised in Lancashire and lives with her husband and two sons in Shropshire.

Find out more about Kate at her website www.Katelong.co.uk
You can follow Kate on Twitter.
You can buy this book via Amazon UK or Amazon.com