Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite

Ann Baron has enjoyed her life of privilege and wealth as she has been married for twenty years to her college sweetheart, top executive Mike Baron. They live in a custom built mansion with their teenagers, Nate and Lauren, and Ann enjoys her bubble baths, expensive champagnes, meeting her friends for a near no-calorie lunch and shopping for cashmere sweaters, expensive clothes and shoes. Then Ann's mother, Eileen, telephones from their family farm in Pennsylvania and tells Ann that she cannot deal any longer with her husband Sam, Ann's father. Sam has both Parkinson's and dementia, his daycare center can no longer cope with him, and their selected apartment at Meadowbrook, an assisted living center, has been postponed. So Eileen and Sam are coming to live with Ann and Mike in the guest cottage the Barons had built on their property. Ann and Mike have only visited Ann's parents at Christmastime over the years and Nate and Lauren barely know their grandparents. Ann calls in her decorator to redo the guest cottage for her parents, but after years of living far from them and no longer functioning as their slightly over-weight daughter, how will Ann deal with this intrusion into what she sees as her "good life" with Mike? And how will Nate and Lauren adjust to having their grandparents living right in their backyard?

"The Good Life" by Susan Kietzman is a deeply satisfying and very well-written story about the complex and often difficult relationships between parent and child, grandparent and grandchild. Throughout its pages of well-created characters and believable but sometimes trying situations filled with great dialogue, "The Good Life" offers the reader a glimpse into what actually defines a good life. Is it material goods and a lavish life style? Or might a good life hinge more on relationships with others? Kietzman has written a book that everyone everywhere should read. There is much to be learned from "The Good Life." This book is a keeper!