Some Kind of Hero by Donna Hay

Synopsis: What do you do when your kids don’t want to share you with anyone else - except the person you least want?

As a single mother, Tess is used to juggling a full-time job as a teacher and looking out for both herself and her son. But at seventeen, Dan is far more independent than she realises. What’s more, he has taken it upon himself to bring his parents back together - whether Tess wants it or not.

Meanwhile, to their Yorkshire town moves Jack, a widower with a mountain of baggage, to say nothing of a stroppy teenage daughter…

My thoughts: Tess has brought up her disabled son Dan on her own for seventeen years, and doesn’t see why his dad should be involved now because he’d abandoned her when she was pregnant and had never even bothered to reply to her letters. But when Phil does show up, Dan worships him.

As a character, I thought Phil was horrible. He was nice and everything, but I thought it was a bit weird the way he just assumed that he was welcome and it seemed like he almost forced Tess to talk to him sometimes. Every time he turned up I just cringed and wished he would get lost!

Another character I didn’t like was Jack’s work colleague, Charlie. She is desperate to go out with Jack and is always scheming to make him like her. But Jack has two daughters, and Charlie hates kids. She seems to think that he’s going to ditch his daughters to go out with her. She was a nasty piece of work.

My favourite character was Emily, Jack’s teenage daughter. She was a typical stroppy teenager, but she was really good at seeing through people like Charlie.

Overall I really enjoyed this book, even though it was slightly predictable. I thought the story did a very good job of showing the relationships between single parents and their children.