Always the Last to Know
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15
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Sometimes you have to break a family to fix it. From New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins, a new novel examining a family at the breaking point—in all its messy, difficult, wonderful complexity. The Frosts are a typical American family. Barb and John, married almost fifty years, are testy and bored with each other...who could blame them after all this time? At least they have their daughters-- Barb's favorite, the perfect, brilliant Juliet; and John's darling, the free-spirited Sadie. The girls themselves couldn't be more different, but at least they got along, more or less. It was fine. It was enough. Until the day John had a stroke, and their house of cards came tumbling down. Now Sadie has to put her career as a teacher and struggling artist in New York on hold to come back and care for her beloved dad--and face the love of her life, whose heart she broke, and who broke hers. Now Juliet has to wonder if people will notice that despite her perfect career as a successful architect, her perfect marriage to a charming Brit, and her two perfect daughters, she's spending an increasing amount of time in the closet having panic attacks. And now Barb and John will finally have to face what's been going on in their marriage all along. From the author of Good Luck with That and Life and Other Inconveniences comes a new novel of heartbreaking truths and hilarious honesty about what family really means.
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3.5 stars. I thought this was going to be standard, cliched Women's Fiction for the first half of the book. I was certain that the two slightly estranged sisters would bond when their father suffers a traumatic brain injury, while the sister who is married with children and a successful job realizes you can't Have It All, and the sister who is trying to make it as an artist in New York City returns home and realizes that she can only be happy in small town Connecticut (with her high school sweetheart of course). And the father and mother finally realize what is really important after the accident, and save their dying marriage. Well, some of that happens. But a lot of it doesn't. Without getting too spoilery, I will just say that Higgins takes the story in a few surprising directions, and while the ending is happy and hopeful, not everyone ends up in the exact place you would have predicted. The message is that even if love is “what sneaks into the in-between spaces” and not the thing that fills up your heart it's still worthwhile. Along the way we get lots of trademark Higgins humor, a few too many sentient body parts (“The baby smiled at me and my ovaries spontaneously frothed over with eggs”), and a s0-ugly-it's-cute dog. I've had my ups and downs with the author over the years but she appears to have moved past her earlier heroines who were desperate to find a man to ones who are searching for multiple things, true love just being one of them. While I didn't enjoy Always the Last to Know as much as her previous effort, [b:Life and Other Inconveniences 42166299 Life and Other Inconveniences Kristan Higgins https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554753967l/42166299.SX50.jpg 65756831], I would still recommend it as a solid summer read. ARC received from Net Galley in exchange for honest review.
