“You’re a mess,” a girl named Sophie tells her mom in “The Gulf of Lions.” She’s not wrong.

Her mom, Alice, is recovering from breast cancer. She’s also reeling from her husband Pete’s revelation that he’s been unfaithful (repeatedly — although that’s something readers know that she doesn’t). Alice is contemplating an affair of her own. And she’s driving around France with adolescent Sophie and Sophie’s little sister Iris, armed with what you could call conversational French — if the other conversant speaks slowly and only about food.

“The Gulf of Lions” is a sequel to Caitlin Shetterly’s excellent debut, “Pete and Alice in Maine,” in which Alice learned about Pete’s infidelity while weathering the COVID-19 pandemic in Maine. By the end of the earlier book, Alice and Pete came to an uneasy understanding but it wasn’t at all clear that their marriage was salvageable. No spoilers here other than to say there’s less ambiguity in the ending of “The Gulf of Lions” but that it poses questions suggesting Shetterly might not be done with this family, whose last name she doesn’t reveal.

There’s also a fun little secret in the structure of “Gulf.” Like “Pete and Alice,” it alternates among the four main characters’ perspectives but only Alice’s chapters are in first person. Pete’s, Sophie’s and Iris’ chapters come from a close third person that suggests a narrator who has deep insight into how they feel but who is not them. Late in the book, when Alice — a playwright who has not produced a play in years — hints that she has an idea for a writing project, you may join me in wondering if “The Gulf of Lions” might be that project.

The multiple, sometimes overlapping, perspectives are a huge strength of the book. Sophie, who could be the person Britney Spears was singing about in “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” is especially fascinating. Shetterly captures the baffling swirl of questions that make adolescence so rough: Should she be watching her weight? Is it her fault that her parents’ marriage is rocky? Why won’t her sister shut up? Is it OK to enjoy spending time with her family even though it flies in the face of the cool facade she wishes to project?

Sophie is crabby, loving and bright — often, all at once — and Shetterly creates a strong sense that she will figure things out. But, near the end of the book, Sophie makes an enormous mistake that could have lasting effects on her entire family.

Characters make many mistakes in “The Gulf of Lions” (a picturesque corner of the Mediterranean that the family visits) but Shetterly treats those human errors the same as acts of God, such as breast cancer. Untoward events, whether we create them or not, constantly send human lives in unexpected directions and the thing that’s important is how we respond.

Sometimes, the response is terrible. Sometimes, the characters know exactly what to do. Always, in “Gulf” and “Pete and Alice,” there is a sense that, as Pete says several times, they’ve “got this,” because a team has a better shot at figuring things out than an individual.

“The Gulf of Lions” is witty, breezy and great fun to read, with the travelogue bonus of lively descriptions of the gorgeous places the family visits and the incredible things they eat. I am dying to sample the juicy green plums they keep inhaling, for instance, to enjoy their honeyed complexity. And, come to think of it, “honeyed complexity” is not a bad way to describe Shetterly’s satisfying writing.

The Gulf of Lions

By: Caitlin Shetterly.

Publisher: Harper, 326 pages.

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