Problem 1: The Divorce

Because I said in the original post that I wanted to help other people if possible, I will address why your novel sucks one point at a time. First up, your plot. Yes, you have a lot of things going on here, but that doesn't make it a rich story. Explaining why your plot is so weak will take several posts.

The story seems like it is supposed to be about a woman who decides to move in with her ailing mother, kooky sister and surly niece after her husband refuses to talk to her about an affair he may or may not be having. The novel opens with the subplot of a mismatched bratty couple for whom the woman is acting as wedding coordinator.

Is this a comedy? With all you boast about on the back cover (another entry here all together), I thought this was supposed to be a drama. I mean, you did file it under "literature," so I'm a bit confused as to why your characters never address the very real problems with which you've presented them.

The first real problem Angela, who may or may not be the main character (it's kind of a weak ensemble cast), faces is that her husband has decided to meet up with another woman. And he doesn't tell her about it. And when she confronts him (kind of), he doesn't want to talk about it.

All of a sudden she's getting a divorce. We learn about the ONE conversation where he doesn't want to talk in a flashback. Forgetting for now that this flashback comes while she's apartment hunting (so she's still living with the guy after that ONE conversation where nothing is said), I have to say that I have no sympathy for your main character whatsoever.

Angela reads a letter that says, "I'll be just as giddy as you," or some nonsense and all of sudden the marriage is over. She's gone snooping through her husband's things, found a letter, reads it out of context, and then does nothing but brood until her husband comes home. Rather than build up what a terrible day that was for Angela—how agonizing that wait is, how much it kills her to think that her husband is even talking to this woman, all the reasons why she hates this mystery woman—we see her day pass quickly and get some lame back story about the other woman. (The title character! Again, an entry for another day...) Her husband comes home at 3 a.m. and she broods and expects him to read her mind. When he doesn't, she decides things are over. Your main character behaves in exactly the way you've always told me I should not. That I should loathe women who expect men to be mind readers. So, maybe it's just me? No, you didn't create a sympathetic main character. This woman should be going to dark and ugly places mentally if she has almost 24 hours to contemplate what her husband is up to and WHY he's doing it.

Yeah, you skipped the why.

Your attempts to keep Angela nice and to create a sympathetic character in the husband, telling us about how Miss Nevada (the other woman) played with his heart in high school, does not help us understand Angela, hate Miss Nevada, or care at all whether or not this marriage will work out. If anything, this event—finding the letter, coming back at 3 a.m. from a trade show that ended at 9 a.m.—only helps us think that this marriage has been dead for quite some time but you, the author, are not going to pull the plug on it. Instead you're going to have them get together in the end. And rather than work really hard to make that happen and be believable, you're just going to make Angela and her husband kind of wishy-washy and seemingly in need of good heart-to-heart.

Oh my God! There are another 450-something pages still left in this book. Now what? Do they ever talk? NO! They don't. Not even on page 494! Other people tell Angela to talk to her husband. (long pause) And that's it? That's all that happens? We don't even know why Angela decided she needed to leave. Why is she leaving? If her husband was unfaithful, why is SHE moving out? Shouldn't she be packing his bags? No, because then she would be DOING something. And your characters don't DO anything. Waiting for your husband to call apologize is not doing anything. We don't even get to experience the anguish of waiting for that phone to ring. We don't get to sit in her office with her and have her get excited that each and every jangle might be the sound of her husband and their relationship coming back to her.

Obviously, this major problem is just a weak plot device to put the two sisters together under one roof. Couldn't you have just had mold growing in the walls of her condo or a neighbor with a construction project she's decided is simply too noisy? Did Angela need to be married at all? No one ever talks to her husband. He'd be really easy to delete from the story.

My suggestion for making your first "problem" better: Either have Angela fly off the handle and very suddenly move into her mother's house (why is she taking the time to apartment hunt?) in a fit of rage that causes her to become incredibly embarrassed—so much so that she remains living at her mother's house to prove that she was right even though she knows she wasn't. Or have Angela be a spinster who suddenly moves in because she can't stand what's happening at her own residence. Some minute problem that demonstrates how vain she is. And if you take the first suggestion, please address the problem of divorce. Who gets the house, the kid, the dog, the car, etc.?