The Sweet Spot is a tangled and complex though still fun story – it definitely feels like living in a busy brownstone. It is the well told story of three women, a building in Manhattan, and the quasi-foundling who binds them together.

Lauren and Leo Shaw and their three kids have inherited the straight-from-the-seventies brownstone apartment they’re dwelling in. Their building is notorious in the neighborhood due to a legendary dive bar, the titular Sweet Spot, which is in its basement (and run by Dan). The day they move in they meet entrepreneur Felicity, who owns a hip Soho boutique and has no idea how to deal with her pregnancy – the result of her affair with the married Russell. Lauren tells Felicity she ought to follow what her heart tells her – resulting in a domino effect that puts her in the crosshairs of one very angry woman.

Melinda was married to Russell and she is not thrilled, to say the least, that Felicity disrupted their thirty year union. She tries to get back on her feet by becoming a receptionist at Lauren’s kid’s school, and when she learns that Lauren encouraged Felicity to press Russell into divorcing her, her fury knows no bounds – and results in a scene at Felicity’s boutique, and Melinda deciding to make Lauren and Felicity’s lives miserable.

Olivia works at Felicity’s company, and is dealing with her own break-up, which is probably why she snidely goes off on Melinda when she stops by to loudly disparage what they have on sale at the boutique. It’s a viral moment that embarrasses Felicity into firing Olivia and gets Olivia a nasty reputation. Fortunately for her, Lauren’s mother – Evelyn – decides that Olivia is just what Lauren’s busy family needs – a new nanny.

Into this mixed up, messed-up family situation Horatio – aka Hank — is born. Unfortunately for Horatio, Felicity doesn’t have a mothering instinct and ditches him with his dad for business commitments and an affair. Doubly unfortunately for Horatio, Russell is more interested in chasing down the betraying Felicity, and abandons the baby, leaving him with Lauren and Leo. Lauren, Olivia and Melinda soon find themselves forming an indivisible parental unit to take care of the baby. But will Felicity and Russell ever return for him?

This book is such a fun romp that head-hops between various characters, each of whom are funny, horrifying or calamitous in their own ways. The book is a messy riot of art and romance and humor (the best plotlines are Leo and Lauren’s very stable romance and Melinda’s newfound love for Dan the barkeep). Olivia is the only weakly-drawn character in the book; I liked her but she needed to be rounded out. It’s a solid story about love, parenthood, and the pursuit of citybound happiness, and the loose camaraderie works very well and builds quite realistically.

I had to subtract some points from a final moment that’s a little too saccharine. The character has barely begun to develop and when this moment happened, I absolutely cringed at the last few sentences, which left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

But perhaps you’ll be willing to overlook that last moment in the name of sisterhood. In any event, The Sweet Spot is still sweet enough to earn a recommendation.

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