The Goodbye Year
by Kaira Rouda
As featured in: Working Mother * Woman's Day * Redbook * Chico's * Sunset magazine * Coastal Living * SheKnows * Woman's World * Yahoo! Beauty * Fox 28 * The Berry Melanie, a perfectionist mom who views the approaching end of parenting as a type of death, can't believe she has only one more year to live vicariously through her slacker senior son, Dane. Gorgeous mom Sarah has just begun to realize that her only daughter, Ashley, has been serving as a stand-in for her traveling husband, and the thought of her daughter leaving for college is cracking the carefully cultivated façade of her life. Will and his wife are fine—as long as he follows the instructions on the family calendar and is sure to keep secret his whole other life with Lauren, the woman he turns to for fun (and who also happens to have a daughter in the senior class). Told from the points of view of both the parents and the kids, The Goodbye Year explores high...