by Kaira Rouda
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Just released: May 3, 2016
Publisher: SparkPress
Genre: Women's Fiction
Paperback: 312 pages
Rating: 4
First sentence(s):
Melanie Bronson needed to sit down. Beads of sweat soaked her forehead, no doubt ruining the blowout she'd just sat through at the salon.
Melanie, a perfectionist mom who views the approaching end of parenting as a type of death, can’t believe she has only one more year to live vicariously through her slacker senior son, Dane. Gorgeous mom Sarah has just begun to realize that her only daughter, Ashley, has been serving as a stand-in for her traveling husband, and the thought of her daughter leaving for college is cracking the carefully cultivated façade of her life. Will and his wife are fine―as long as he follows the instructions on the family calendar and is sure to keep secret his whole other life with Lauren, the woman he turns to for fun (and who also happens to have a daughter in the senior class).
Told from the points of view of both the parents and the kids, The Goodbye Year explores high school peer pressure, what it’s like for young people to face the unknown of life after high school, and how a transition that should be the beginning of a couple’s second act together―empty nesting―might possibly be the end.
My two-bits:
It took awhile to get into this story with its big cast of characters - most of which were unlikable. But the secrets revealed from both parents and their teens were a draw.
There are plenty of characters in this story who provide different aspects of the craziness that occurs during the period of college preparation and application in the upper middle class world.
Having gone through some of that craziness last year, I could relate to some parts. Whew! It is a workout and the tension and stress is captured in the book.
Got me thinking about the empty nest syndrome.
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* review copy courtesy of It's Raining Books Blog Tour (details) sponsored by BookSparks
