FAMILY PICTURES

Sylvie thought she had already experienced the worst that life could deal her: After her husband died, leaving her to raise Eve alone, what more could happen?

Years later, Sylvie has a good life. Her daughter Eve will head off to college soon, and her second husband, Mark, may be ready to settle down into a sales manager position. While life with Jonathan brimmed with the glow of young love, life with Mark rings with a secure love. Maybe it’s Mark’s traveling that has kept their love life sparking after 11 years—years that have seen other marriages fail. Yet all is not well, not well at all, in Eve’s life. Struggling to hide her worsening eating disorder, not to mention her secret second Facebook account, Eve’s once-close relationship with Sylvie is deteriorating. One fateful weekend, Eve goes to an all-girls party in New York City, where she meets a kindred spirit, Grace, and the two girls swiftly abandon the others to their partying. Grace takes Eve home, where she meets Chris, Grace’s older brother, who is instantly attracted to her. Grace’s mother, Maggie, is a perfectionist (even her husband calls her the General), who has adopted a posh accent and posted rules throughout the opulent house. And it is there, in Maggie’s lovely Connecticut home, that Eve sees a photograph that will ruin two families. Riddled with coincidences and unlikely secrets, Green’s (Another Piece of My Heart, 2012, etc.) latest still manages to explore complex family dynamics with warmth.

An inverted fairy tale in which the happily-ever-after occurs without the prince.