As much as I know that Jojo Moyes has received critical and popular acclaim for her historical fiction, I have to admit that I most enjoy her novels that concern themselves with the present-day realities of women's lives. That's why I was so excited to pick up her latest book, WE ALL LIVE HERE. Fortunately, it more than satisfies.

It's hard to know which element of Lila Kennedy's complicated life to focus on first. Heaven knows she herself wouldn't know where to start. There's her falling-apart house, for one thing, which she loved back when she and her husband bought it as a fixer-upper. But now that she has been left to deal with its myriad maintenance issues on her own, Lila is finding the iffy plumbing significantly less than charming. Her mild-mannered stepfather, Bill, has helped (kind of) by moving in to help her with childcare and cooking, but her daughters are about to stage an outright revolt if they have to eat another lentil loaf. Meanwhile, recently widowed Bill is still mourning the loss of Lila's mother, paying tribute to Francesca by hanging a risqué painting in the living room and hiring a gardener to dig up the backyard and develop it into a memorial garden for her.

"In the end, as the title suggests, WE ALL LIVE HERE is an ode to a different kind of family --- one that is unexpected and impossible to contain, but in the end is something to embrace with all your heart."

As for Lila's career, that's also in shambles. A full-time writer, she became the laughingstock of the publishing world --- and the local elementary school parents --- when, in the wake of her last book of relationship advice, her husband left her for Marja, another parent at the school. Now the two of them are madly in love, living in a spotless, minimalist house that's the polar opposite of Lila's ramshackle Victorian. And she's heard through the grapevine that they're expecting a baby of their own. Is it any wonder that Lila can't quite respond to her agent's increasingly insistent requests for a few chapters from her new book --- on how to thrive as a suddenly single (but still relentlessly sexy) person in your early 40s? Oh, and did I mention that Lila has been "volun-told" that she is to oversee the costumes for the elementary school production of Peter Pan?

So when Lila's long-estranged father, Gene, arrives on her doorstep for a brief stay, and then can't quite bring himself to leave, this may be the final straw. Gene is a washed-up actor who had one hit show back when Lila was young. But then he ruined both his relationship with Lila and his marriage to Francesca by being unfaithful, inattentive and altogether unreliable. Even so, he's a larger-than-life kind of guy who has a way of sucking up all the oxygen in the place --- just when Lila barely feels like she can catch her own breath.

As you're probably gathering, there's a LOT going on in WE ALL LIVE HERE, but in this case, that's a very good thing. Moyes adeptly brings together so many different primary and secondary characters and plot strands (even more than I've mentioned here!) that reading the book feels, in a way, like navigating Lila's own life: complicated, messy and difficult to pin down, but also filled with elements of humor, joy and discovery. Lila makes mistakes, misreads people, and even --- in one particularly wrenching situation --- makes poor and selfish choices that hurt people. But she also is resilient and loyal to the people she loves, and she genuinely tries to do the right thing. It's just that it's hard to see the way clearly when there are so many competing things blocking her view.

Although Lila is the central figure for most of the novel, her older daughter, Celie, takes the reins at a couple of key moments in the narrative, offering an observer's view on Lila's parenting style as well as insights into Celie's largely (to Lila) inscrutable life and glimpses of a different side of Gene. Celie also steals the show, in a manner of speaking, near the end of the story. Who would have thought that one of the novel's biggest tear-jerking moments should take place at a school play?

In the end, as the title suggests, WE ALL LIVE HERE is an ode to a different kind of family --- one that is unexpected and impossible to contain, but in the end is something to embrace with all your heart.