Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough is a story about three generation of women living under the same roof trying to cope with each other and with life. Joanie, Ivy and Caroline are each going through changes in their life that they are finding difficult to handle. Joanie is a soon to be 50 divorcee. Her husband is living with a woman half his age and just announced that they are having a baby. Ivy is a widow whose savings has quickly dwindled thanks to the bad economy. She can no longer afford to live on her own and moves in with her daughter Joanie. Caroline is a typical teenager, dealing with her parents divorce, living with her grandmother and being a pea in the very big pond known as High School. What all 3 of these women have in common is that they are trying to find their place in the world and with each other.I enjoyed reading Women on the Verge. The tone is light, funny and sometimes snarky. The story is told from 3 POVs - Joanie, Ivy and Caroline - so that you get a bird's eye view of what each character is thinking. The character I could relate to the most is Caroline. She doesn't connect with her mother and grandmother. She only has one friend. And she tries to avoid her father completely. I could understand why Joanie's relationship with Ivy was tenuous. Ivy undermines Joanie constantly. She insults her in an infuriating passive-aggressive manner. There was a scene where Joanie finally gave into her anger with her mother and I was happy that she did. Although, I felt sympathy for Joanie, I felt that she was so consumed by her own misery that she couldn't or wouldn't see her daughter's misery. And in typical teenage fashion, Caroline started acting out.I felt that the "breakthrough" for these women was a little anti-climatic. Towards the end, they do come together and start to see each other in a different light. I felt that the ending was just the beginning for Joanie, Ivy and Caroline. I would have loved to have read more about these women working through their issues with themselves and each other.Note: I love the cover. Very original and cute.
