judyward's review against another edition
3.0
Life never turns out the way we plan it and this reality slaps Eloise Hampel right in the face. Eloise has just started her dream job--teaching at Harvard University--when she gets a call that her only sister and her brother-in-law have been killed in an accident and her mother's coping skills extend only to asking the eldest child who has just lost her parents to call Eloise to come home and take over. Before she knows it, Eloise has given up her life in Boston, moved back to the large, old house in Cincinnati where she grew up, taken a job teaching at a local college, and she is raising her sister's children. Now almost twenty years later, the children, Theodora, Josh, and Claire are grown up and Eloise is at a crossroads. She is academically stagnant, she is involved in a secret relationship, and she is being drained financially by the family home that she desperately wants to sell. The same house that Theodora, Josh, and Claire call home. Leah Stewart examines the issue of what constitutes a family and how family ties are stronger than any of us realize in this engaging book.
dhilderbrand's review against another edition
5.0
I absolutely LOVED this book. I only put it down when I passed out - then woke up and kept reading. The characters were so vivid to me. Although the sibling relationships were incredibly different from my own, I still loved following their stories. I wanted to scream and shake the characters on several occasions but I think that is just evidence of how real they all were to me.
I loved the writers portrayal of Cinncinati. I think of St Louis a lot like that city - a midwest thing, I guess. The story so brought the city to life for me.
I cannot wait to read her other novels.
I loved the writers portrayal of Cinncinati. I think of St Louis a lot like that city - a midwest thing, I guess. The story so brought the city to life for me.
I cannot wait to read her other novels.
nbrickman's review against another edition
3.0
I wanted to like this book far more than I did and what it comes down to is essentially too much tell instead of showing and lack of nuanced character development. The heart and truth only seemed to resonate by the last 100 pages for me. I did however enjoy thinking about themes such as how our experiences shape who we are- how we can often use others as an excuse to deny who we are and how we tend to define ourselves by the idea of home and the places we think truly say who we are.
anniere73's review against another edition
3.0
The book just seemed to drag on without going anywhere. The characters weren't engaging at all and seemed self centered and whiny.
keelygorski's review against another edition
3.0
Good read, I give it 3.5 stars. I kind of hope the author decides to do a sequel. I would love to see where the characters land since the ending left them in a place of uncertainty.
christiek's review against another edition
2.0
I did not enjoy spending time with these characters at all. I think that they were fairly realistic in their irrational and wrong-headed decision making, but all that realism was more annoying than enlightening.
casehouse's review against another edition
I picked this up because of the setting. And the book is, in fact, full of references to real places in Cincinnati. Even so, it didn't seem to have a strong sense of place. But I didn't feel it went much of anywhere. Not much character development. Not much plot. Not for me.
lazygal's review against another edition
2.0
There's a lot of discussion about "New Adult" books right now, and this is (I think) squarely in that genre but... I just didn't really care about the characters enough.
We open with 28-year-old Eloise, newly hired at Harvard, flush with the success of her first book and - wham! - her life changes when her sister and brother-in-law die, leaving her as guardian to their three children. That's the prologue, with the rest of the book taking place today. The three children have grown up... mostly. Claire is supposed to head to NYC to become a professional ballet dancer, Josh has given up his career as a musician in a moderately successful band, and Theo is working on her dissertation. Eloise sees this as an opportunity to finally sell the family house and move on with her life; the others are happy to stay at home, not really growing.
Is this the key to New Adult? Vaguely dissatisfied 20somethings who don't want to face the responsibilities adults face? Slightly more upscale and higher educated slackers? If so, no thanks. Maybe in another book, with people I cared about, but this wasn't that book.
ARC provided by publisher.
We open with 28-year-old Eloise, newly hired at Harvard, flush with the success of her first book and - wham! - her life changes when her sister and brother-in-law die, leaving her as guardian to their three children. That's the prologue, with the rest of the book taking place today. The three children have grown up... mostly. Claire is supposed to head to NYC to become a professional ballet dancer, Josh has given up his career as a musician in a moderately successful band, and Theo is working on her dissertation. Eloise sees this as an opportunity to finally sell the family house and move on with her life; the others are happy to stay at home, not really growing.
Is this the key to New Adult? Vaguely dissatisfied 20somethings who don't want to face the responsibilities adults face? Slightly more upscale and higher educated slackers? If so, no thanks. Maybe in another book, with people I cared about, but this wasn't that book.
ARC provided by publisher.
liralen's review against another edition
3.0
So here's a smart choice: the very beginning of this book characterizes some of the main players of the book very well via their responses to tragedy and newfound responsibility--and then the story moves ahead and focuses on the characters, all adults now, facing the ripple effects of the same tragedy and responsibilities.
The setup of Eloise's sudden unexpected mother role is just that, setup, allowing the focus of the story to be how the characters interact with, and relate to, each other and their surroundings. More than fifteen years down the line, they are a family, but a fractured one; a family in which each person is facing in a different direction.
Of the four characters who tie the book together, and in particular of the three siblings, none is a villain. There are things to like and dislike about each, but what conflict there is is no one character's fault. It's a nice departure from books with a 'good' sibling and a 'bad' sibling -- not that there isn't a place for those books, but the boundaries and possibilities are of necessity different.
A couple of quibbles: First, three years is a long time to keep a relationship secret. I have a hard time believing that that wouldn't have become an issue much earlier. (When you're not comfortable being honest about a relationship, should you be moving in together?) Also, I found it interesting that Claire is the only one of the main characters not to have a voice in the book. In some respects it makes sense, as that makes it easier to hide her secret (and there is such a thing as having too many POV characters). At times she feels like the least developed character, though, and I wondered whether it would have helped to see things from her perspective some of the time.
But there's some nice nuance here. Eloise never regrets her decision to take care of her nieces and nephew, but that doesn't mean she doesn't resent it -- and them -- sometimes. Theo doesn't expect Eloise to act in the way her mother did, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want her to sometimes. All of the characters are in, or at some point end up in, relationships they're not certain about.
Not a life-shattering book, but solid and quite quotable. Would be three and a half stars, were half stars possible.
I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.
The setup of Eloise's sudden unexpected mother role is just that, setup, allowing the focus of the story to be how the characters interact with, and relate to, each other and their surroundings. More than fifteen years down the line, they are a family, but a fractured one; a family in which each person is facing in a different direction.
Of the four characters who tie the book together, and in particular of the three siblings, none is a villain. There are things to like and dislike about each, but what conflict there is is no one character's fault. It's a nice departure from books with a 'good' sibling and a 'bad' sibling -- not that there isn't a place for those books, but the boundaries and possibilities are of necessity different.
A couple of quibbles: First, three years is a long time to keep a relationship secret. I have a hard time believing that that wouldn't have become an issue much earlier. (When you're not comfortable being honest about a relationship, should you be moving in together?) Also, I found it interesting that Claire is the only one of the main characters not to have a voice in the book. In some respects it makes sense, as that makes it easier to hide her secret (and there is such a thing as having too many POV characters). At times she feels like the least developed character, though, and I wondered whether it would have helped to see things from her perspective some of the time.
But there's some nice nuance here. Eloise never regrets her decision to take care of her nieces and nephew, but that doesn't mean she doesn't resent it -- and them -- sometimes. Theo doesn't expect Eloise to act in the way her mother did, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want her to sometimes. All of the characters are in, or at some point end up in, relationships they're not certain about.
Not a life-shattering book, but solid and quite quotable. Would be three and a half stars, were half stars possible.
I received a free copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.