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A Modern Blended Family

A podcast therapist falls deep into this compelling story of a Blended LGBTQIA family

Falling All In Main Image of a mother and daughter playing in the pool
Falling All In Book Cover. Image of a book, a woman leaning on the edge wearing a big hat and in the distance is a child in a lifesaver float

Title

Falling All In

Author(s)

Laina Villeneuve

Genre

LGBTQIA+ | Sapphic Fiction | Transgender

Laina Villeneuve’s Falling All In tells a compelling story of what’s best for the children when their LGBTQIA+ parents separate and find love elsewhere.

Sarah Cooper, a podcast psychologist, has set stringent rules for herself and her listeners. One is that divorced parents with children should not seek new love relationships because they lead to instability. Better to focus on the children. But Sarah Cooper wasn’t planning on Jass.

An avid listener to the Sarapist podcast, pool technician Jass Diaz goes with the flow. Generous to a fault, she’s supplying her womb so her best friend Amara can have what she’s wanted most: a child. To Jass, family is what you make of it, and she’s happy to become an auntie to the baby she’s carrying.

When Sarah’s pool goes haywire, she seeks Jass’s help to get it fixed so Chloe, Sarah’s daughter, can swim to her heart’s content during the blistering California summer.

What happens after that is a stomach-twisting, child-rearing, family-blending adventure that will fill your tear ducts.

Villeneuve sparks an intriguing debate on an issue that, until recently, because of evolving laws, affects LGBTQIA couples more than ever: how to balance a dating life with parenting for divorcees. Should divorced parents even venture into the dating pool when their children need most of their attention?

The answer might seem simple, but Sarah is adamant about focusing all her energy on her toddler. However, rather than dating when she doesn’t have Chloe, ex-wife Tricia is intent on dating and introducing Chloe to her new girlfriend, forcing Sarah to reassess her situation.

Add Jass’s birth of Amara’s kid to the mix, and we have the perfect ingredients for a steamy novel. Sex aside, the question remains: Do children of divorced parents benefit from said parents seeking new relationships? I’ll let the reader decide, but with these seemingly innocuous questions about parenting, both main characters bring up excellent points about dating and rearing children. You’ll have to read the book to find out what those are.

The narrative is thought-provoking. With its delightful cast of diverse characters, Villeneuve smartly represents many facets of the LGBTQIA community, and there’s nothing I love more than books with characters of all walks.

 

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About the author(s).

Laina Villeneuve lives in Southern California with her wife and three children. She consumes words and says the mountains of words in her college students’ essays are her protein. Nonfiction reading is great fiber, and general fiction her fruits and veggies. Lesbian romance is always dessert! She started writing after her wife had their twins and has since written 11 novels. The anthologies of lesbian romance, Whispers in the Stacks and Happily Ever After, feature her short stories.

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