In an age of sitcoms like Motherland and Catastrophe, it all feels rather safe. The book has a great ear for modish teenspeak, but the humour is often rather leaden and the parenting tropes are ticked off predictably. There's not much narrative tension, and the tone is ambivalent – sometimes the book wants to be a light comedy and at others it feels like a more serious examination of the work-life issue. Relatable? Certainly, but the book lacks psychological depth, and the characters feel a bit obvious. Related in a chatty diary-style narrative that owes much to Bridget Jones, we pick up the story of Ellen, a middle-class mum (au pair, polenta, man-flu, Guide Camp etc.) who's returning to full-time work but must also juggle the demands of her two children, relatives both rubbish and annoying, and a suitably crap husband who massively fails to pull his weight but can't see what the problem is. THIS is the follow-up to bestseller Why Mummy Drinks and is allegedly a cultural phenomenon. Why Mummy Swears by Gill Sims is published in hardback by HarperCollins, priced £12.99 (ebook £6.99) Who has the wisdom or courage to know the difference? There are things we worry about too much, and others we don't worry about enough, this sparely written book seems to say. This is more a study of mood and character than a plot-driven machine. And then the family bump into another group – you wait for the tragedy. A strange neighbour plays tennis solo in the middle of the night.

The book builds subtly but ominously – there's an unaccountable smell, the pipes are set to flood, the children are left unattended for too long. Julia wants to start work on her next book Erik needs to find a way to tell her he has lost his job. SWEDISH-Finnish writer Philip Teir is a rising star of the contemporary fiction scene, and in The Summer House, Helsinki couple Julia and Erik take their two children, Alice and Anton, to spend a summer at the family's old summer home by the sea. The Summer House by Philip Teir is published in hardback by Serpent's Tail, priced £12.99 (ebook £3.99)

Why mummy swears