Is Mean Moms A Good Book For Busy Parents?

Rhea Ravelle, heiress of a powerful and influential family, goes against her family's wishes and cuts ties with them. She chooses to marry Carter Jamison, a man with a failing career and two children born out of wedlock. For six years, she raises his children as if they were her own and helps Carter rebuild his crumbling business. Under her care, the kids grow into kind, well-mannered little stars, and Carter's company finally makes it big and goes public. But right at the celebration marking his entry into high society, the biological mother of his two children suddenly shows up. And Carter, who is usually so calm, completely loses it. He begs the woman to stay, making Rhea the laughingstock of the entire city. That night, he doesn't come home. Instead, he takes the children and runs straight back to his old flame, playing house as a happy family. Soon after, Carter files for divorce. "Thanks for everything, Rhea. But the kids need their birth mother." The children's mother also says, "Thank you for taking care of them all these years. But a stepmother will never compare to a birth mother." So blood beats love? If that's how it is, then she's done playing stepmother. However, the children reject their birth mother flat-out, and they don't want Carter either. They declare, "Rhea is our only mom! If you're getting divorced, then we're going wherever she goes!"

Clara lay on the cold floor bleeding. She stared blankly at the ceiling, and in its reflection, she saw the monster she’d become as her life slipped away. The cruel wife! The “evil stepmother” everyone despised!! She had spent years hurting the people who only wanted her love, her husband, and his children until they stopped looking at her with warmth altogether. And now, in her final moments, the one person she trusted stood above her… holding the knife. Her best friend’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “You should’ve listened, Clara,” she whispered before driving the blade in again. Pain! Regret!! Betrayal!!! Everything Clara had built came crashing down in a pool of her own blood. If only she could turn back time... just once... she would do things differently. She would protect her family. She would stop trusting the wrong people. A lone tear slipped from her eye as her body went still... DEAD! ***** And then... she woke up, gasping for air. Clara’s heart raced as the realization hit her. She had been reborn. Given a second chance. This time, she would not waste it. She would be the mother they needed, the wife he deserved. She will be kind and loving to them. But when the shadows of her past return and the same enemies begin to stir, Clara learns that kindness alone won’t save them. To protect her family, she must become what everyone once feared... An evil stepmother capable of vengeance. Clara died as a villain… and returned to become their savior. Because in her death, she found regret. But in her rebirth, she'd find revenge. They killed her once. They won’t live to do it again. Clara returned from the grave with one goal... to protect her family and vengeance.

The seventh time Dante Moretti served me divorce papers, I was sitting with my son in a cheap diner on Chicago's South Side. I forced a smile and brushed my hand over my son's hair. "Just wait a little longer, sweetheart. This time, Mommy will get custody of you." He stayed quiet for a long moment. Then he looked up and asked, “Mommy, how much do you need to sell me for before you're happy?” Before I could answer, he pulled a handwritten divorce agreement from his backpack and pushed it toward me. "I know you keep fighting Dad for me because you want more money from him." "I wrote the agreement for him. Please sign it. Dad is already tired. Stop making his life so hard." His handwriting was crooked, but every word had been written with care. Dante would give me three million dollars. At the bottom, in my son's childish scrawl, was one more line. [After you take the money, don't bother me, Dad, and Serena anymore. Let us be happy.] Serena was Dante's childhood sweetheart. The woman he trusted more than his own wife. For five years, I had stood against Dante's family, his lawyers, and half the Chicago underworld just to keep custody of my son. For him, I would've walked away with nothing. But the child I had raised for eight years had already chosen another mother. So why shouldn't I give their perfect little family exactly what they wanted?

Mom was a top student at a prestigious school and had always been determined to be the best at everything. She demanded that I learn to walk by seven months, speak fluently by eighteen months, and master all addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division by the age of three. I did all of it. Yet Mom still felt it wasn’t enough. However, when my younger brother, Liam, didn’t speak until he was five, Mom clapped and cheered when he finally did, celebrating his “late-blooming brilliance”. I didn’t think anything of it. Until one day, I was wearing headphones, memorizing Spanish words, and accidentally let the sound leak out, scaring Liam. He clutched his chest and cried, saying his heart hurt. Mom’s eyes turned red as she stormed over and slapped me. Then she grabbed my ear, twisting it a full 360 degrees with all her strength. The pain in my ear was so intense that I lost all feeling, and the fear made me nauseous to the point of vomiting. Still, Mom forced the headphones back on, cranked the volume to the maximum, and locked me in the storage room to reflect. “How could I give birth to such a terrible child? You’re just jealous of Liam. No matter how much I do for you, you’ll never appreciate it! “Love listening to words, huh? Then listen all you want.” But seven days later, when she opened the door, she completely lost it.

Ever since my little brother died of a sudden high fever and Mom started spending all her time with Matthew Hunt, I started cutting her out of our family photos. One day, Dad got a call from my teacher. She overheard me saying I lost my mom, and I wanted to borrow my classmate's mom instead. Dad paused for a moment, then didn't correct me. "Yeah," he said quietly. "She passed away early." At the school's parent-child sports day, Dad saw me slip a cleaner ten dollars and ask her to be my mom for the day. He didn't stop me. Instead, he handed her another 200 bucks and asked if she could attend the parent meeting, too. After that, whenever something called for a mom, Dad let me go out and "hire" one. It wasn't until much later that Mom realized she hadn't heard from us in a long time. She canceled her meetings and came to pick me up from school herself. But at the gate, the teacher frowned and stopped her. Confused, she went home. The moment she stepped inside, she heard me talking to the property manager. "My mom's dead," I said. "Do you wanna be my new mom?"

Half a year after our divorce, my ex-husband became a trending topic online. His current wife, who had just given birth, jumped off a building. When she jumped, she was clutching a printed, 98-page copy of the "Cloves Family Code of Conduct." The reason for her suicide? She couldn’t buy discounted groceries online. A reporter came to interview me and asked, "Excuse me, were you also given the same family rules?"