Book Review: "Let's Pretend This Will Work" by Maddie Dawson

“Well, I just think that when that first love comes along, it brings with it a huge thunderclap of feeling—something so amazing that we get overwhelmed with it. And that it’s tempting to think that it’s the only love there ever could be in the world. But then it ends. Most of the time it ends.”

Mimi is a drama teacher who has never really been in love before. So when she and Ren, her fellow drama teacher, start dating and falling in love, she feels this is her destiny. And her psychic agrees.

But the night Ren proposes to Mimi, he finds out his ex-wife Judith has been in a car accident and had a stroke. He rushes back to New Haven to be with his adult daughters in order to figure out what kind of care his ex-wife needs. He moves home with his daughters to care for Judith in their house, but he convinces Mimi to move to New Haven so he can have her nearby.

Ren rarely has time for Mimi; if he stops by at all, it’s mostly for sex. She is angry with herself and Ren, and realizes more and more that he’s never going to want to leave his family for her. (She even cooks for Ren and his daughters, and spends time with Judith to give them all a break.) To fill her loneliness, she becomes friends with the parents who run a daycare co-op in the ground floor of her building, and little by little, she finds a job and a community, and realizes what her heart wants most.

This is a funny and emotional story about realizing you are worthy of love exactly as you are, not as someone wants you to be. It’s also a story of found family, of recovering from grief, and how strange the path to happiness may seem while you’re following it.

I’ve enjoyed several of Maddie Dawson’s previous books, but this is my favorite. It’s so full of humor and heart. The book will publish 6/1.