She, Myself and I by Whitney Gaskell

Hero: Zack Duncan, Aidan O'Neill and another guy.
Heroines: Paige, Sophie and Mickey.
Grade: C+
Date: 3/14/06

The Cassel sisters have little in common besides a pair of wacky parents and a maddening knack for eluding happily-ever-after endings. But when their lives require damage control, only a dose of sisterhood will do.
Paige, the oldest, is a go-getter divorce attorney who's reeling from her own disastrously failed marriage--and the fact that her ex has suddenly come roaring out of the closet with a cute boyfriend in tow. Middle sister Sophie is having trouble adjusting to life as a wife and expectant mom. With her doubts on the rise along with her weight, she's ogling every available baked good--and every available man--that crosses her path. And up-and-coming medical student Mickey has a racy new plan for her future that's sure to shock her entire family. It includes a dangerously handsome, decidedly married chef...private cooking lessons...and spicy lingerie.

To top it all off, the parents who dragged them through the Divorce from Hell years ago are acting like teenagers in love...with each other! One by one, Paige, Sophie, and Mickey are about to learn just how good it is to have a sisterly shoulder--or two--to lean on.

Real.

If I were to have summed this entire book up in one word, I would use the word real. Because seriously, this book is just about the most real book I've ever read about. The incidents that happen in this book is totally something that can actually happen. It's about real life, it's issues and there's no sugar coating of anything, it's just that....real.

This book reminds me a whole lot like The Solomon Sisters Wise Up, I'm not sure why I felt the need to reread the story again, but I can't say that I didn't enjoy the book because I did. It started a bit slow, but that's probably because I didn't really care for the older sister Paige, you see the whole book is divided into three sections, a section for each sister. Paige is a bitch, and it totally shows in her section of the book, but after I finished reading her section, I liked her, understood her more and was okay with the way she was. And boy did she land on her feet with a hottie like Zack Duncan, he was yummy. The perfect man, really. Tall, broad shouldered and smart? Yum!

All of the sisters are close in their own little way, but there's nothing but love between these sisters, whereas with the Solomon sisters, they didn't even get along, they loved each other but it was more so becuase they had to love each other...with the Cassels, they loved each other, knew it, showed it and put up with it.

Sophie's story was so cute. This is the one that I really felt for, she's the middle sister, just had a baby and her marriage in on the rocks. Her husband Aidan, works too much, is acting weird around her but she thinks it's because he doesn't like looking at her since she had their son, Ben. Her story about how she dealt with the problems of being a new mom and a neglected wife really touched me because I can totally see that happening in real life. This romance novel isn't all glitzy and glamorous but just in your face, this is how my life is and this is how I solved my problems....I really connected with Sophie, thought she was a great heroine and I think she's my favorite Cassel sister.

Mickey, the youngest sister just graduated from college and everyone thinks she's going to Brown to start Med School, no one knows that the sight of blood makes her nauseous. Instead, she wants to become a chef and attend the Culinary School of America. I can totally see myself hedging on telling my parents and family something as big as her not going to med school as originally planned, which is why this book was so real to me. Because, without going into detail, I was fooled right alongside Mick when she was going through her turmoil in the book and so when things didn't turn out as I thought they were going to turn out, I was left baffled but I learned from Mickey's mistakes, so her story was just about as real as you can get. Took me back to high school when everything wasn't as it always seemed but I thought I could change it.

Very light reading, fast paced and just all around good. Recommended to those who need a reason to remember that they DO love their sisters....LOL.