Why do I love these books so much? I'm not quite sure, but the mix of parenting satire, humor, irreverence, and occasional heartwarming seriousness seems to work very well for me. Recommended for parents who like Dave Barry and lots of swearing. ( )

I’d been awake for 30 odd hours and was looking for something light to read as I waited for the sleeping tablet to take effect when I spotted Gill Sims latest and thought it would be perfect, having read and enjoyed Why Mummy Drinks and Why Mummy Swears sometime last year.

A spin off of her successful mummy blog/Facebook page ‘Peter and Jane’, described as an ‘honest, sweary, tongue-in-cheek account of a pretty normal, middle-class Scottish family’, Sims’ books are an exaggeration of the mundanity of family life. The books are best read in order, as the family ‘grows’ through each book.

In Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****, Ellen’s marriage has collapsed after Simon confessed to sleeping with another woman on a business trip, and Ellen has moved into the cottage of her dreams (except for the damp, the single bathroom, and brambles rather than roses by the door) with their teenagers, Peter who is 13 and Jane who is 15.

I found Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a **** mostly hilarious, even though it doesn’t really bear much relation to my own life.

Ok, so I do have a houseful of teens (2 girls, 2 boys) so I’m familiar with the drama of teenage girls, and the ability of teenage boys to inhale the contents of the fridge within hours of it being filled, and I might have turned of the wifi once or twice in order to get their attention, but I’d never tolerate Jane’s behaviour, or her drinking habits (my kids will want to be much more subtle).

And ok, I may have a piece of furniture or two deliberately placed to hide a stain in the carpet (and a teeny hole in the wall) but I don’t have any dogs, or chickens, I rarely drink, and I still have a husband, so I don’t have to brave the horrors of online dating as a newly single woman in my mid 40’s.

Fair warning, the language is crude (those asterisks in the title barely mask the F-word which is used liberally through the novel), there’s an awkward sex scene, a passing mention of crusty socks, and a lot of drinking, but there are some brief moments of seriousness related to divorce and loss.

Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a **** , like Gill Sims previous novels, was an easy, quick and fun read. ( )