by Amanda Eyre Ward
Published: 2020
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Genre: Contemporary
Hardback: 352
Rating: 4
Goodreads | Website
Travel destinations:
Greece, Malta, Italy, France, Spain
First sentence(s):
The large oil portrait of Charlotte and her children began with a photo snapped on a Hilton Head Island beach at sunset.
Zombie sighting:
There were the ever-present grayish-skinned guys zombified before a row of slot machines.
Section 3, Chapter 2, page 104
When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the "Become a Jetsetter" contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can't seem to find a bride; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday.
Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young and she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When she wins the cruise, the family packs all their baggage—literal and figurative—and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso.
As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed, and the Perkins family is forced to confront the defining choices in their lives. Can four lost adults find the peace they've been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back to each other?
My two-bits:
Tough reading about a dysfunctional family theme with unlikable characters. But, it moves forward well as each character is forced to confront selves and others.
* part of Reese's Book Club 2020 (here)
* part of Armchair Autumn Travel (here)
