Although a successful romance novelist, Terry Russell hasn’t had luck in her own love life. After a disastrous first date with cocky, hot-shot New York chef Matthew Everston, she retreats to her friend’s French villa for the summer to finish her latest novel, with her reluctant teenage daughter in tow.

She drove me into a corner, then forced me to go beyond my limits. She made me confront the absolute: love, sacrifice, tenderness, abandonment. She dislocated me, transformed me. Why didn’t anyone warn me? Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about this?” Un heureux événement, or an intimate view of motherhood, sincere and with no taboos.