The Cliff House

Stella Davenport and the nieces she raised, Daisy and Beatriz, face daunting romantic decisions in this charming if uneven contemporary. Stella was college-age when her sister had died, leaving two daughters behind. Stella put everything on hold to raise them. Now that they’re grown, she’s ready to have a baby of her own. Pregnancy at 40 is challenging, but when the man she walked away from years before moves back to Cape Sanctuary, morning sickness becomes the least of her worries. Beatriz is now a single mother herself, pining for her best friend even as her rock star ex-husband tries to win her back. Daisy, who carries the brunt of the sisters’ childhood trauma, copes by compartmentalizing. To the world, she’s a type-A accountant, but secretly she is the whimsical artist known only as Marguerite. When she meets documentarian Gabe Ellison, the lines begin to blur as he encourages her to be truthful about who she really is. For all the drama in these characters’ pasts, their present dilemmas are rather mild. The love stories fall into well-worn territory; the heart of this sweet contemporary story is in the women’s relationships with each other, and it will suit readers on both sides of the blurry romance/women’s fiction divide. Agent: Karen Solem, Spencerhill Assoc. (Mar.)