Tropical Depression

Miranda, a comedian living in Toronto, has just lost the baby she adopted a month earlier. After months of grieving, her family stages an intervention and sends her off to her exiled uncle's island grief resort. On the way there, the boat she's on gets shipwrecked, and she arrives at an extremely kooky neo-Pagan circus! And once she arrives mayhem ensues. Between the colorful grieving attendees in her cohort, her eccentric and meddling wizard of an uncle, her ethereal aunt, and the resort's enthusiastic staff, Miranda would rather be anywhere but there.
This book is first and foremost a comedy and should be read as such. The characters are exaggerated cartoonish versions of what they may otherwise be. And if you go into the book expecting anything else, you will be disappointed, and you will not have given the book its fair chance.  But that's not to say that the book doesn't deal with hard-hitting and heavy topics, in the best way possible.  The book starts with us seeing Miranda lose the baby that she had adopted 30 days earlier because the birth mother changed her mind. The book showcases the horrors of the Canadian adoption system, which are mind-bogglingly ridiculous. 
We also learn about Miranda's struggle with IVF and lost pregnancy, although this topic isn't discussed in detail.  Being set in a grief resort, we have people dealing with their own losses. Miranda's cohort is dealing with all kinds of grief, like the loss of a parent, excommunication from a family, living with the aftermath of a botched plastic surgery, and teen pregnancy. And each of these grieving people is comedic in their own right, while also presenting a real view of loss. Being a comedy did nothing to make the discussion of these topics any less serious. This whole farce is run by Miranda's uncle, who is a legitimate wizard, and her auntie, who is eccentric in the most hippy ethereal way. And these two love nothing more than meddling, with the best possible intentions. And her uncle's main target is setting up Miranda and the very hunky New York chef, Scott. I was very skeptical of Miranda's and Scott's relationship at first. She was very clear that she had no interest in him, and it felt like he was still trying to befriend her, with no instinct of self-preservation. But things clicked for me when they decided to fake dating to get her uncle off their backs. And as we all know, fake dating always leads to true love!