Rose Miller married well and has spent 40 years taking care
of her husband in the small town of Kinvarra, Ireland. As
her ruby anniversary party approaches, she begins to
reevaluate her priorities, although she doesn't discuss her
plans with anyone. Her sister-in-law, Adele, has always
felt lucky to have been born rich, although Aunt Adele's
tactless comments have made her spinster life somewhat
lonely. Adele idolizes her brother, Rose's husband, and is
also jealous of the three perfect girls that Rose has
raised.
The oldest of the three daughters, Stella, works as a
lawyer and raises her daughter alone, content with celibacy
and motherhood. She isn't looking for a romantic
relationship when she meets an attractive client who's also
a divorced father. Although she falls quickly in love with
Nick, his daughters and ex-wife have other plans.
Middle daughter Tara seems to lead an exciting life as a
writer for a popular evening soap opera, but life with new
husband Finn has become one unending drunken blur. Tara
focuses on her career and tries to hide her desperation
from her family and coworkers, while avoiding Finn's bitter
and blaming mother and unexplained family secrets.
Holly is the baby of the family, overshadowed by her older
sisters and never realizing or believing that she's
beautiful and talented. Holly feels like a disappointment
to her mother, and she's almost paralyzed by shyness and
self-doubt. Holly is closest to her flat-mates, and they
all work in fashion, although Joan is a design school
student, Kenny is a fashion stylist and Holly works retail
at a department store. Her friends try to set her up with
men, but Holly has never recovered from an early dating
disappointment.
Told in vignettes throughout Dublin and the surrounding
area, this novel creates a large network of believable and
interesting characters. Initially, it was hard to warm to
the story because of the large cast of characters, which
built slowly over the first quarter of the book. Much like
the soap opera for which Tara writes, each storyline and
set of characters create their own dramatic tension.
Flipping between the story lines serves to heighten the
suspense in scenes of otherwise subdued and typical family
crisis. With so many plots to follow, I preferred certain
stories (like Holly's battle to gain self-confidence) over
others (like the alcoholism or infidelity plots). All of
the storylines were well-developed, and since everyone here
was part of a larger family, the intertwining of plots kept
me interested throughout the novel. JUST BETWEEN US is an
excellent family saga that captures the romance and search
for satisfaction that mothers, daughters, sisters and
friends all face.
In the Irish Country town of Kinvarra, the Miller girls are
generally perceived to have it all. Single mother and
brilliant attorney Stella looks like a Renaissance Madonna
and is about to get a second chance at love. TV soap opera
writer Tara has just married the love of her life -- the
charming Finn -- after a whirlwind six-month romance. And
shy, beautiful Holly is living an enviable bohemian life,
with artistic friends and a beautiful apartment where her
creative talents find an outlet. Have there ever lived
three more fabulous sisters?
Now look more closely.
The Miller girls' mother, Rose -- calm, elegant, and
unchanging -- is about to celebrate her 40th wedding
anniversary. But as plans for the party of the decade take
shape, it's revealed that nothing in the lives of Rose and
her daughters is as it seems. And as the secret heartaches
the four women have kept hidden from each other begin to
emerge, they're set to discover whether they're strong
enough to handle the truth -- and whether greater happiness
awaits them still.
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