Other People's Houses

I’m not sure how Abbi Waxman manages to spin the day-to-day routines of rearing toddlers and teenagers in the suburbs into a story that I (a kid-free millenial) couldn’t put down, but she did it. Somewhere between the crises of the carpool routine and the heart wrenching secrets, this book sucked me in until I cared about nothing more than the private lives playing out behind the closed doors of one unremarkable Los Angeles neighborhood.

An honest and cheeky treatise on friendship, parenthood, and what it really means to grow old together, Other People’s Houses tells the story of four families tied together by a common street address. There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of life in suburbia—and a peek into the “totally normal” lives of a few “totally normal” families, all the while proving that even the most apparently mundane of existences can be anything but boring.

Above all else, this book is just plain funny. Waxman’s dry sense of humor and razor-sharp wit had me embarrassed to read this book in public; I could never predict when she’d spring her next laugh-out-loud-worthy line on me. Perfect for a quick beach read or a comical escape.

At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find … repressed hopes and dreams … moments of unexpected joy … someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband ...

*Record scratch*

As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this ...

After the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, Frances vows to stay in her own lane. But that's a notion easier said than done when Anne's husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families—and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage.