Publication date: October 2017
Format: ARC
ISBN: 0062668722
Amazon price: $12.99 (Kindle)
Rating: 5/5 stars
Synopsis: Adam, a former musician who is nine months and four days sober, sneaks out of his parents’ house on Thanksgiving morning – his first time being invited back in years – unable to handle the pressure of staying sober and happy with a family he’s only beginning to reconnect with. Marissa, a flight attendant pregnant with the child of her high school boyfriend, throws up in a hotel bathroom and works up the courage to spend the day with her in-laws at their lavish mansion. Their paths cross in an airport restaurant and spend most of the day together through a series of misadventures in which Marissa confronts her infidelity and her own alcoholic mother, and Adam the pain of his broken heart and the overwhelming urge to relapse.
Trigger warnings for substance abuse, discussion of the suicide of another character, mental illness, sexual content, discussion of abortion (Marissa spends most of the book thinking about whether or not it’s the right choice for her).
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Marissa has a problem. In the midst of her rocky marriage, she reconnected on a flight with an old boyfriend, had a one-night stand, and got pregnant. She’s now on her way to her in-laws’ house to endure her husband’s insufferable (but rich) family (and the hired help they verbally abuse).
But she recognized that for all her lamenting of her fate and her fortune, she just might be the luckiest girl to have ever got out of the Shittier Boston Area. And all she had to do was preserve that good luck, or all her hard work, whatever you wanted to call it, was have an abortion and keep her mouth shut about it.
Adam has a problem, too. Nine months and four days sober, he decides to try to do something nice for his family and make coffee – then accidentally breaks the coffee pot. This event also shatters the tenuous hold he had on his emotions, and he finds himself slipping out of the family home to catch an earlier flight back home and return to his solitary, predictable, sober life.
Dating – “putting himself out there” – seemed to be another component of a rightly directed life.
However, their paths merge at the airport and they find in each other a sort of kindred spirits. Adam’s valiant attempts at sobriety are refreshing for Marissa, whose own mother is an alcoholic who routinely neglected Marissa and her sister as children in order to get drunk.
Marissa’s and Adam’s adventures over the day run the gamut of emotions. From a brutal conversation between Marissa and her husband (a whiny POS, btw), to Adam sitting in a restaurant with three alcoholic drinks sitting in front of him, it’s a tour de force of emotion that will have you examining your own relationships and wanting to live your own best life.
I was very happy this didn’t turn into a romance, as most of these books often do. There’s no weird inner dialogue about suppressing feelings or furtive glances out of the corners of their eyes. They’re just two people.
Another aspect of this book I really enjoyed was Marissa’s contemplation of how to handle her pregnancy. She’s Catholic, which she says prevents her from having an abortion (but not from cheating on her husband with another married man); she also believes that having an abortion is the only way to save her marriage. She contemplates whether or not this is the best thing to do for the duration of the book, and it was refreshing to see that process rather than just “oh I don’t know what to do but not abortion because reasons” cop-out storyline.
What are your family holidays like? Do you tend to get along or is more of a ‘grin and bear it’ situation?
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