Hello Beautiful

I understood that this book was intended to pay homage to Little Women. And it kinda does - there are four sisters who are very close and one does die. There is a male who disrupts the equilibrium of their relationship. There is a father who adores them but it is his hapless nature that forces their rigidly Catholic mother to demand that each one go to college to be self supporting. When one of them becomes pregnant with no father in sight and is determined to keep the child - well it all starts to drift far from Little Women at some point. It is a story of family and how it can become dysfunctional - although not all family members or readers would agree on where the dysfunction lies. It came highly recommended and led to a good book group discussion about family in general and Louisa May Alcott in particular but most of the group considered it an elevated kind of chick lit.