BOOK REVIEW: The Accidental Mother

THE ACCIDENTAL MOTHER by Rowan Coleman is a good piece of “chick lit”. I was looking for a light read, so thought that I would try an author who was new but who sounded not too deep. THE ACCIDENTAL MOTHER fit the bill perfectly.

Sophie has her eye on a great promotion; her life has been centered on getting her boss’s job. The office talk is that the job will soon be available and that she and one other woman are in contention for the promotion. In the middle of her biggest project and knowing that she can not make the slightest mistake, she receives word that her childhood friend Carrie has been killed in an automobile accident.

Carrie had married and was the mother of two young children. Several years earlier Carrie had asked Sophie to care for her children if anything ever happened to her. After several glasses of wine Sophie had said yes, knowing that they were both young and such an event was certainly not going to happen.

Sophie has had no time for any type of personal life. She had a promising career, a small, chic apartment, and a great shoe collection. Now she has six year old Bella and Izzy, age three. The children’s grandmother is moving to an assisted living facility and their father is nowhere to be found. The only person to care for the children is Sophie...and she had promised Carrie.

The results of course are humorous and genuinely heartwarming. Sophie is terribly under-equipped to care for two grieving girls and some of her ways of coping are inventive to say the least.  

The cold, career woman who is suddenly thrown into motherhood is an oft used one in women’s  literature, but THE ACCIDENTAL MOTHER is set apart by good characters:  a little girl who will only wear her lilac fairy costume and definitely will not ride in a car, a too mature six year old who can be won through a mutual love of shoes, a very gay assistant, and a wealthy, handsome suitor who does not interest Sophie. Sophie’s growth as she learns to open to a world outside of her job is well done. There is humor in her inability even to feed two little girls, but from the beginning it is easy to see that she will make it all alright for the three of them. And if the ending left the reader hanging a bit, well, that was OK, too.

I have learned that there is a sequel to THE ACCIDENTAL MOTHER titled The Accidental Family. It is fairly obvious what the story line will be but it would be nice to see what happens to Sophie, Bella and Izzy.