Accidental Happiness: a novel. Jean Reynolds Page

April Harris heard my plea for book recommendations and told me about this one. I read it in one day.

I think that fiction books can go one of two ways. One is to put people in weird situations and see how they react to them. The other is to put people in very normal situations and see how they react to them. I think the former is the plot device of the majority of books written today, and the latter is much less used but equally welcome, as long as the author can write well.

This is one of those people-in-weird-situation books. Gina is a 33 year old widow, too stunned by grief and living on her husband's boat. Late one night she hears someone board the boat and in a panic, fires her gun. The "intruders" turn out to be Reese, her husband's ex-wife and Angel, an Reese's 8 year old daughter. Angel takes a bullet in the shoulder and suddenly the widow's and the ex-wife's lives become entwined.

This was a very gripping book, and I didn't see coming the even weirder situation that develops at the end of the story. It was well written and had sympathetic characters all around.