Belinda Benny “Boobs” Bernstein knows one thing: everyone she loves leaves. So, now she leaves them first. She’s searched for her worth in her size and in her relationships, but has come up empty every time. Benny went cross-country from Virginia to California to remake her life, but when her mother and sister experience tragedy, she comes back home to help them in their time of need.

When Benny arrives, she finds a mess, or rather a bunch of messes. Her mom believes that she’s contracted a dreaded venereal disease. Benny’s sister Jami is a pierced, purple-haired emotional whirlpool in love with a man who may be a bank robber. The house is crammed full of magazines, clutter and stray animals. The guy she hires to help with the mess is HOT HOT HOT and oh-so-complicated. So Benny, AKA Miss Fix-It, goes to work...

Why Moms Are Weird by Pamela Ribon is a pithy and achingly accurate tale of a family that puts the fun in dysfunctional. Benny has worked so hard at trying to overcome her past, to fit in, to match, that she loses a part of herself. The emotional pull of this story will resonate with readers in a big way. We’re all neurotic about something, and we’re all trying to overcome the things that make us that way. You’ll laugh until you cry and/or cry until you laugh at the antics and situations set forth in this poignant and funny chronicle about the girl who comes home carrying her own burdens, only to find her family too self-absorbed, too selfish, too uncaring to notice Benny’s smaller booty. Love and lust, life and loss all flow together here, and Ms. Ribon shows a definite talent for a story with a moral. Five Angels!

Reviewed by: Michelle