The Mother-in-Law, by Sally Hepworth

The Mother-in-Law is local Melbourne author Sally Hepworth’s fifth novel.  I’ve previously read The Things We Keep (still her best novel IMO) and The Family Next Door and once again I approached her novel as light reading with an ‘issue’ (to balance the challenge of reading The Atheist by Indonesian author Achdiat K. Mihardja, about which more later).

The blurb for the Mother-in-Law goes like this:

Someone once told me that you have two families in your life – the one you are born into and the one you choose. Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don’t choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.
From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm’s length. Diana is exquisitely polite, but Lucy knows, even after marrying Oliver, that they’ll never have the closeness she’d been hoping for. But who could fault…