“An extrovert, friends with everybody and nobody at the same time.”

This is one of the lines that I marked with a post-it while reading Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday by Christine Reilly. In a book that has been described as a family love story, we are taken on a journey with the Simone family through the ups and downs of life and we see how loved ones move apart and come together during tough times.

Claudio and Mathilde find each other in New York City as newly minted adults and quickly discover that they each are just what the other one needs. The story follows them as they grow into a family of five with three daughters, Natasha, Lucy, and Carly. Soon they face mental and physical illnesses along with money troubles and I was touched by the gestures of familial love.

“…Mathilde had probably seen his face more times in his life than he had. Wasn’t that something?”

I almost felt like I was reading a series of poems. This was a very unique writing style, which at times felt quirky, but also felt choppy during others. Although the style is different from books I typically read, it was a nice change of pace.