Look on the Bright Side is family fiction at its best. This family is just like many families in real life - they love each other but when they get together there is a lot of teasing and bickering ...just like it was at the house that I grew up in. There are three strong women whose stories are the basis of the book.

Lark is a doctor. Her goal is to work as an oncology doctor but her boss decided that she cried too much and in the latest death she was involved in - the family had to comfort her. She gets moved to the emergency department and finds it to be full of challenges but her dream is to go back to oncology. She lost someone very close to her to cancer several years before and wants to help people and families and help to find a cure. As she is going through her sadness about moving, she is approached by a surgeon who has an offer for her. He is unliked by the people at the hospital due to his arrogance and has a nickname of Dr Satan. He needs a date for the summer and for his sister's wedding. She is pretty much against it until he offers her a chance to get back into oncology and then she decides to give it a try.

Lark's mom Ellie is an artist and owns a gallery in town. She and her husband are still in love after all these years and everyone feels that they are the perfect couple...until she finds out a secret about him and moves out. She has to decide what direction her future will go. She moves in with Joy, who is also Lark's landlady.

Joy has spent her entire life being unhappy with herself. The only person she ever really loved - despite several marriages - was her brother who just died. She needs to work on her self image and learn to love herself.

The three women characters are all at a crossroads in their lives and need to figure out what direction that they need to go to find happiness and fulfillment. Lark's story is the most prominent but we also get chapters from Ellie and Joy. I must admit that Joy was my favorite character. She was a wonderful woman who wanted everyone around her to be happy but she never spent any time on her own happiness.

This is a book about family and love, grief and recovery and learning to love yourself and trust your decisions on your quest to find personal happiness. ( )

Three women. All at different stages in their lives, but all at the same point of finding themselves again.

Lark lost the love of her life at a young age. Ever since, she's dedicated her time, whether consciously or not, to honoring his memory. When her plans don't come to fruition and she's forced to pivot, she begins to find the possibility of something new exciting. And when a colleague asks Lark to pose as his girlfriend for an upcoming family wedding, Lark begins to think maybe it's time to start living her life again.

Joy has recently lost her brother. With years of struggling with her looks and worth, he was the only family she would claim. He was her best friend. Without him she's lost.

Ellie has seemingly lived the most perfect life with the perfect family, but a terrible secret threatens everyone and everything she's put her faith in over the years and makes her reassess her future.

I was a little surprised that Kristan Higgins was revisiting the Smith family after A Little Ray of Sunshine. I shouldn't have been since there are enough siblings to go around, but I certainly wasn't expecting it. Suffice it to say, it was a nice surprise to begin reading Look on the Bright Side when the realization hit that we were going to get Lark's story this time.

Lest you fear, Lark is the main focus of the book which I rather liked because, looking back, I felt like she was the most on-the-periphery Smith sibling. Seeing her front and center was a good change.

With that being said, however, I don't know that I felt like Joy and Ellie's sections were as fleshed out as Lark's. I think their journeys are completely valid and worthwhile, but I don't think they got the full attention they too deserved.

Regardless, I did really enjoy this read. I think what I liked the most is that the story took a few unexpected turns which kept me very engaged. There were moments where I thought I could guess where Kristan Higgins was headed, but then she would change things around and we would head in a different direction. I appreciated this more than I think I can articulate. It felt a lot like subverting the regular tropes we're all on the lookout for in our romances and utilizing them for a more contemporary story over romance.

For me, it wasn't readily apparent how much Lark had closed herself off until she begins "dating" Dr. Lorenzo Santini because she's sparring with him right out of the gate. I like the contrast between Lark and Lorenzo. For all that he was a very difficult person to deal with. He ended up bringing out this side of her that she hadn't maybe ever shown anyone or at least not for a long time. But also on the reverse of that you can see that he is lonely and he doesn't seem like a terrible person. He cares. He wants to do a good job. Yes, he's arrogant and he likes to flaunt his arrogancy and his achievements but he's not a bad person. As with many Kristan Higgins books, we get further context in the form of flashback chapters. It's there that we see everything Lark has been through and how she's built her life up to this point. I don't want to say too much because I really like the turn things take, but I appreciated that even though Lark has been grieving she still hasn't lost her spark.

And let me say, it would have been very easy for that spark to go out completely. This book, more than any others of Kristan Higgins' recent ones I'd say, was very heavy and heartbreaking. I was brought to tears a few times. It makes the idea of looking on the bright side more poignant I think. You can still grieve and wish things had turned out differently, but you can also keep moving forward.

Overall, like all of Kristan Higgins books, it was a very heartening read. One that I connected with emotionally and I appreciated the care she showed her characters. I hope there's room for another book in the Smith family as I'd be very interested in the other siblings getting their own stories told. ( )

Definitely a heavier book than I expected, but very well-written. Lark is an oncologist who feels too deeply and cries too much. She's fake-dating Lorenzo, who is her polar opposite: a cold and seemingly emotionless surgeon. Lark isn't looking for love and this is not a light-hearted rom-com, she's still grieving a past love and it's a jagged kind of grief. As she gets drawn closer to Lorenzo's family, especially to his brother Dante, she starts to wonder what it would mean if she opened herself up to love again. This starts out on a lighter note with the focus on the fake dating, then gets progressively much more serious as we learn more about Lark's past; have your tissues ready, friends. Meaty side plots with her parents' midlife crises, and with Lark's mother Ellie and landlady Joy. Main theme of lost love and how we come back from it, if we ever do. This was not my first book by this author, and I look forward to more. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review! ( )