Life As It Comes Book

Sisters with nothing in common? That's Mado and Patty.

Studious and responsible, 15-year-old Mado is the family brain. Patty, on the other hand, is a carefree 20-year-old party girl who lives on her own and has plenty of boyfriends. The two are following divergent paths . . . until their parents die in a car accident and a family court judge reluctantly appoints Patty as her sister's guardian.

Now these two improbable siblings face the challenges of growing up together—but it's Mado who quickly assumes the big sister's role. And it's not a role she particularly wants—especially after Patty announces that she's several months pregnant. . . .

Anne-Laure Bondoux writes with insight, humor, and poignancy about the bonds between sisters—and the challenges of everyday life.

Publishers Weekly

Containing as much romance, scandal and drama as a soap opera, Bondoux's (The Killer's Tears) novel examines how two Parisian sisters, as different as night and day, must reinvent their notion of family after their parents are killed in an automobile accident. Mado, the 15-year-old narrator of the story, emerges as a more sympathetic and convincing character than her recently appointed guardian, sister Patty, a 20-year-old party girl, whose lack of sound judgment and immature behavior may be as frustrating to readers as it is to Mado. The two girls find themselves in a precarious situation when Patty becomes pregnant and waits too long to have an abortion. Fearing the reaction of social workers, who have warned her that "at the slightest digression, [her] guardianship may be reconsidered," Patty attempts to conceal her condition. Near the end of her pregnancy term, she whisks Mado away to their inherited country home, where both girls fall hard and fast for a pair of fellow vacationers from the Netherlands. While the author portrays the girls' reactions to their obstacles credibly, the book's climax which involves Mado's solo delivery of Patty's child is as implausible as the sudden appearance of the baby's estranged father, who paves the way for a too-tidy resolution. Ages 14-up. (Feb.)

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