Rating: 51% | ★
Synopsis (from NetGalley): When twenty-nine-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it’s not easy. She deserted them all—and her high school sweetheart—five years before with little explanation, and they've got questions. Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family’s pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all their secrets—secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes—and ultimately find a way forward, together. Spoiler-Free Review We Are the Brennans has garnered a lot of pre-release buzz, including an impressive 4+ rating on Goodreads and a coveted spot as one of Book of the Month's picks for July—but I'm sorry to say that this book just wasn't for me. I predicted every major plot twist in the novel, which stripped away the effectiveness of the pacing and made the story move at a glacial speed. Moreover, I found the characters disappointingly two-dimensional, likely because of the author's choice to give each major character at least one of their own third-person limited chapters. The constant jumping around from character to character disrupted the flow of the story as well as the characters' respective developments. However, the writing itself was also a little too straightforward—incredibly tell not show. The ending of the novel was disappointing, though I understand that the state of affairs as it stood before the last chapter pointed to only one viable conclusion—no matter how irksome it was. However, I did enjoy that this story really did feel like a personal story of the author's. There was heart and legitimate potential—it's simply the execution that fell flat. We Are the Brennans is out August 3, 2021. Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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