The Last Romantics

3.5 Stars

The Last Romantics is a book about love. It focuses on one family, The Skinners, made up of Renee, Caroline, Joe, and Fiona and their mother, affectionately called Noni. We're told much of the story through Fiona's perspective as the lives of the Skinners are unraveled by their father's death and their mother's 3-year depression, and how the family attempts to stitch themselves back up again.

I want to start off by saying that adult contemporary is not normally my jam. I read this book as it was the Barnes and Noble Book Club pick for the month and I run the event every month at my store, and it was the first book that I've annotated probably since my high school years. I found myself engaged, reacting to the story, making predictions, etc. So, it wasn't an unenjoyable read in the slightest and it was a good book, but it just wasn't my favorite.

What kept this from being a 5-star book, or even a 4-star book, was that the climax was kind of a let down. There's all this build up for for 250 pages for something concerning one of the siblings (not going to say it out of respect for keeping spoilers out of my review) and then once it happened it was... a major let down. There were other elements as well that were not really explained and felt kind of out of place– such as Fiona working with a Climate Change organization and then the situation with Luna just felt so... incomplete?