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Week three of the summer holidays and mother of two, Ellen, decides something needs to change. The cheeky parenting app she invented was a runaway success, but it’s been months since she quit her day job to create more brilliant apps at home and all she has to show for herself is a newfound talent for Solitaire and a rapidly expanding waistline thanks to all the biscuits she’s been eating. She needs to go back to work.
Ellen is eventually offered a cool new job as a software developer at an uber-hip tech start-up in a swanky office. Ellen hasn’t worked full time since she had Peter and Jane, but the kids are getting older and the job is too good to pass up, so she takes the plunge.
Things go swimmingly at first. But it’s not long before the cracks start to appear. Ellen’s husband is struggling to adjust to her working full time, their children are running wild, Ellen’s been roped into chairing the PTA at school and somehow, she’s accidentally rebranded herself at work as a carefree 40-something with no kids.
With a marriage that’s feeling the strain, life isn’t being kind to Ellen. Can she fix things before they go completely pear-shaped? And how will she come clean to her co-workers about her secret life as a mum?
Why Mummy Swears is the follow up to Gill Sims’s wildly successful debut novel Why Mummy Drinks, and is just as honest, hilarious and painfully relatable. The author’s deeply honest look at life with kids is also a refreshing counterpoint to those carefully curated mummy blogs that paint such perfect pictures of parenthood.
Ellen’s struggles to be seen as more than just a mother in Why Mummy Swears start important conversations about female identity, and the contrasting situations of James and Lydia – both working parents at Ellen’s office – illustrate how working mums and working dads are viewed differently (boo, hiss). Written in diary form in an irreverent voice that recalls the diaries of Bridget Jones and Adrian Mole, Why Mummy Swears is laugh-out-loud funny while dealing with the important stuff.
What more could you want from a book?
About The Author:
Gill Sims is the author and illustrator of the hugely successful parenting blog and Facebook site ‘Peter and Jane’. She lives in Scotland with her husband, two children and a recalcitrant rescue Border Terrier, who rules the house. Gill’s interests include drinking wine, wasting time on social media, trying and failing to recapture her lost youth and looking for the dog when he decides to go on one of his regular jaunts.
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