Sometimes your nearest and dearest are a real pain in the backside... Career-woman-extraordinaire, Alex, has her heart set on a partnership in the firm she's been slogging her guts out for. That's until her sister rings with some shocking news. Distraught, Alex returns home to New Zealand, to find both her mother and sister's lives in chaos. She does her best to pick up the pieces but with her sister's crazy mood swings and her mother's downright adolescent behavior they are both really testing her sense of family duty. Caroline's marriage to Rory is on the rocks, as is her sanity, as she unknowingly struggles with postnatal depression. The mother of two small children, she finds herself resentfully trapped in the daily grind of full-time mothering. And now her Dad is gone, her mother is a helpless mess and her little sister is back (her lucky, childless and husbandless sister)...and it's simply all too much for Caroline to cope with. Penny has lost her husband of forty-two years. A devoted wife for so long, what is she supposed to do now? And what about all the retirement plans they made? Outwardly, she grieves for the man she loved for so long, but inside the part of herself she's kept hidden for so many years is fighting to break free...and she's powerless to stop it.