Her Mother's Keeper by Nora Roberts

omnibus cover

Her Mother's Keeper (1983) (Silhouette)
Nora Roberts
Grade: D
Genre: contemporary romance
Source: own

Romance RBC 2015: A book by Nora Roberts 

Gwenivere Lacrosse had left home with an innocent naivety to make a life and career for herself in New York. Two years later and she’s returning to New Orleans for a well-deserved break and to sort out the small problem of her mother’s infuriating lodger … Luke Powers is a celebrated writer who is said to be just as adept with women as he is with words. Gwen has grown up with a houseful of strangers but never one like Luke who has insinuated himself so readily into her mother’s life. When Gwen starts her campaign to get him out of her mother’s house and life, she doesn’t expect her plan to backfire quite so spectacularly …

Saving June by Hannah Harrington

Saving June (2011)

Hannah Harrington

Grade: D

Genre: YA
Sex scenes: one scene, fade-out-ish

Source: NetGalley

June had always been the perfect daughter. The eldest of two girls, she was the prettier sibling with the perfect grades, perfect GPA, perfect friends, perfect extra-curriculars with the brightest future ahead of her. Harper is the rebel child: she’s never been able to live up to her parents expectations of her and so has taken to smoking, never expanding her clothing choices beyond a hoodie and jeans and barely scrapes by in school. June’s suicide leaves a chasm that the defiant Harper has no wish to fill.

No one had had any idea that June was suicidal; she hadn’t even left a note. Harper had been the one to find her: lying as if asleep in the backseat of her car, still in the garage, an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. Their family life had already been pretty dysfunctional what with their parent’s less-than-amicable divorce, but now so more than ever. Harper’s father has disappeared off into his new life with his new girlfriend and her mother is like a zombie, unable to go through the motions of everyday life without the pious Aunt Helen to coddle over her. Everybody is distraught but Harper can’t even cry.