This post contains affiliate links.
Title: Mom Jeans and Other Mistakes
Author: Alexa Martin
Genre: Women’s Fiction
If you’ve hung out here at all before, you know that Alexa was my Pitch Wars mentor, which I always like to disclose before I review one of her books because, yes, of course I’m biased. But she’s also amazing and hilarious and I wouldn’t write these reviews if I didn’t love her books with my whole heart.
Mom Jeans and Other Mistakes is Alexa’s first foray into women’s fiction, and if you’ve read her romances, you might know why she made the leap from writing about love to writing about female friendships. Female friendships have played a huge role in all of her romances so it was a natural slide over to women’s fiction to focus solely on the bonds friendship.
Lauren and Jude couldn’t be more different, but that hasn’t stopped them from being friends since they were kids. Lauren is the responsible one–always doing the right and expected thing, at least until she got pregnant and had to drop out of med school only to later be cheated on by her doctor fiance. Jude is the hot mess–a fitness influencer with a reality TV star mom who sleeps all day and drinks all night. When both women find themselves in dire financial straits, they decide to move in together, Lauren, Jude, and Lauren’s five year old daughter Adelaide. The move is an adjustment for both, but having their friend close becomes essential for both women as Jude deals with issues with her mother and Lauren is unexpectedly hit with custody papers from her ex. The two decide to start a podcast called Mom Jeans and Martinis and it’s an instant hit. But when Jude’s behavior starts becoming more and more reckless, to the point of endangering Adelaide, it could end a lifelong friendship. (Though, spoiler alert, even though this isn’t a romance, there is most definitely an HEA.)
Honestly, I don’t know that there are enough words for how much I loved this book. I read the first couple chapters back when Alexa was drafting and was immediately hooked, and the book just got even better from there. I love the friendship between Lauren and Jude. Their whole relationship is so fully fleshed out, it felt completely real and completely relatable. Jude’s relationship with her mother was a high point for me because I also have a narcissistic parent and I was just physically cringing reading about Jude’s struggles and how her mom has affected basically every other relationship in her life. As a mom, Lauren’s custody struggles really hit me as I couldn’t even imagine the threat of having my kid taken away from me. I also loved that in Lauren’s situation, her ex’s new partner didn’t become the evil stepmother. It was so nice to see those two women come together to try to co-parent. But maybe the highlight for me was Adelaide, who is basically the coolest kid on the planet. I loved her little fierce feminist point of view and she was basically the cutest.
Altogether, this book was full of so many perfect moments. I loved the relationships and the heart and the power of women coming together and taking care of each other. All that with humor to boot!
Overall Rating: 5 stars