Hello and thank you for visiting The Cozy Book Blog! Below please find my review of The Beautiful Misfits (Regal House, March 2023), written by humorist Susan Reinhardt. This novel is the poignant story of a mother’s unrelenting determination to reach her opioid addicted son. I want to thank Jackie Karneth at Books Forward for the ARC and the opportunity to read and review this unforgettable novel.
Best, Diane-Lyn
Synopsis & Musings by Diane-Lyn
Oh, the joy of families. We see it all around us. The social media posts celebrating graduations, weddings, holidays; featuring beautiful pictures of perfect, smiling faces standing in front of marble fireplaces looking. Just. So. Damn. Happy. But remember folks, maybe the grass is always greener because your neighbor’s lawn is fake, right? Or, as the saying goes, don’t compare your insides to somebody else’s outsides. Isn’t that what they say?
Of course, nobody wants their inner crisis to be broadcast for the whole world to see. But that is exactly what happened to news anchor Josie Nickels when her whole world exploded in a very public way. A few drinks and a story that hit too close to home fueled an on-air outburst; a massive spillage of her troubled family life resulting from her son’s opioid addiction. And it all happened on live TV. The meltdown cost Josie a career and drove her son, Finley, out of her life. With her whole world in shambles, the disgraced local celebrity takes a job at a cosmetics counter in a department store. Struggling to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and repair her broken family, Josie must adjust to her new reality and find the strength to fight for her son without enabling his addiction.
More Musings & Review by Diane-Lyn:
Susan Reinhardt is an award-winning fiction writer who understands exactly what it means to mother a drug addict. She writes from the heart and yet manages to interweave quirky characters and humor at appropriate times to create a well-balanced, beautifully written novel.
Beautiful Misfits is a fictional account of a mother in the throes of an adult child’s opioid addiction, and a society telling her that she is to blame. She is the ex-wife of an unsupportive, enabling husband – and the daughter of a critical and narcissistic mother. This is the story of a heartbroken mother who stops breathing every time the phone rings because she wonders if it is “the call”. Beautiful Misfits is an honest, gripping novel about a mother’s determination to save her son as she wrestles her own demons.
What I love about Reinhardt’s writing is her ability to create a real and relatable protagonist. Josie is an authentically flawed, yet remarkably strong woman who refuses to give up on her son. I loved her! Beautiful Misfits is an education in the drug epidemic and a frank look at faulty, inadequate rehab programs. It is a journey through family dysfunction, workplace bullying, love, forgiveness and hope. The lovely southern setting and array of eccentric characters (including an angelic elderly babysitter) brings a lightness to an otherwise serious novel. Poignant yet funny, Beautiful Misfits won me over from the first page and had me intrigued until the very end. Highly recommended!
Big Pharma pushed it, doctors prescribed it, and genetics pollinated it.
– Susan Reinhardt, The Beautiful Misfits
Order your copy now…
To purchase your own copy of The Beautiful Misfits, click here: Amazon. This is an affiliate link, which only means that when you click the link and purchase the book, I receive a tiny commission at no additional cost to you. Happy reading!