Wow, I loved The Most Fun We Ever Had, which cracks me up, because I thought the writing on the first few pages was so pretentious that I wasn’t going to be able to continue! It either became less pretentious… or I got used to it. Ha.

The Most Fun We Ever Had is about the Sorenson family – parents Marilyn and David, and their daughters, Wendy, Violet, Liza, and Grace. The book is set in 2016 with flashback chapters all the way back to Marilyn and David meeting, then up to 2014. It’s set in two locations I am familiar with – Chicagoland and Iowa City. The author mentions cities, streets, and businesses I know, which made me feel even more connected and invested in the story. I wonder if all those details would be annoying to someone not familiar with the area, or if they’d just read over them.

This book made me realize how much I love character driven novels. This book is 532 pages, and it’s about nothing more than the drama in this family. And I loved every page (except the first few where I was rolling my eyes, as noted above).

In the beginning of the book, the child that Violet gave up for adoption, and is now 15 years old, reappears in her life, at the hand of her older sister, Wendy. No one except Wendy knew about the child, Jonah, so it’s a big shock to everyone.

All the sisters are a mess – Wendy is widowed, drinks a ton, sleeps around, and is extremely snarky, cruel, and honest. Around the same time Jonah appears, Liza gets pregnant by her depressed partner of ten-years, then cheats on her partner with a colleague. Grace, the youngest by nine years from Liza, is lying to everyone about what’s really going on with her far-away life in Portland, and continues to feel isolated and like the “epilogue” of the family – left for the end and forgotten and unimportant.

The daughters all think their parents have the perfect marriage and that plays out over and over again in the book – how they’re constantly setting themselves against that standard and failing. The daughters resent their parents for their perception of their marriage, which made me sad – children can be so cruel to their parents. Through the flashback chapters, you see that things weren’t always sunny for Marilyn and David.

Sigh. I didn’t want the book to end. But it did. And it will probably be my last read of 2019… but I’ll be thinking about these characters for some time.

Next up, I think I will read Talk to the Paw, about a cat burglar who is a cat, and steals things from his owner’s neighbor to set him up with her. Sounds awesome, right? Hee hee.