I quite enjoy Jacquelyn Mitchard's family dramas, and I thought The Breakdown Lane was good - traversing illness, parenting and infidelities, it does so without being cloying or overly cliched.
Julieanne's husband Leo goes off to find himself, and is uncontactable when she is diagnosed with MS. Her children sneak off on a road trip to bring their father home, but he arrives with more baggage than they bargained for. The novel is narrated alternately by Julieanne and her teenage son Gabe, which works fairly well - we get both perspectives of betrayal, and can see both occasionally overreacting. And yes, sometimes people in this novel are just too perfect, and everything turns out with a tinge of happily ever after. But it was a very enjoyable tale despite that.
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