This is Where I Leave You: a brief review

taken from goodreads.com

And just like that, all of the books that I had intended to read during the calendar year are crossed off my list. I meant to set the bar a lot lower this year to give myself some grace post-first baby, but it seems I set the bar just a tad too low. (Although I should point out that I read most of these by having them read to me while I did my chores, fed my daughter, and drove all over the place, so it's possible I still would have been working on getting them read in December otherwise.)

This is Where I Leave You (recently turned into a movie that I'm really excited to see, especially given the cast list) tells the tale of an extremely dysfunctional family that comes together to sit shiva following the death of their father. For seven days, these adult siblings and their mother must sit in chairs and mourn while everyone they've ever met comes to bring them food and share in their grief. They all have their own (fairly severe) issues and all of those issues come out in full force when the family is stuck in close quarters for over a week.

Good things about this book: it made me laugh a lot. I really enjoyed almost all of the characters, and I enjoyed how the author gave each of them a considerable amount of depth as the book progressed. I thought the overall plot was sweet and addressed many real-life issues that people have (although I sure hope no single family has all of those real-life issues at once like this one does). Bad things about this book: good gracious I did not need to read about that much sex. I get it...I'm an adult and I am fine with reading about adult things. But I think I've just read way too much adult things recently and I need to cleanse my pallet with some Young Adult for a while. Also, the sex in this one was specific. And detailed. But enough about that...I also thought that a lot of the life-changing, reevaluate your life moments in the book were still a very wordly version of shallow. Most of those moments were really disappointing to me; I just didn't think the characters made much progress even though they had all kinds of deep, serious talks and deep, serious moments. And that's kind of a bummer, I think. Also, I hated the end.

With this book behind me, I'm excited to start a new group of books. I do have a list of books I want to get to soon, but it's not a firm list like this one was. Even though I had made that list of books I genuinely wanted to read, I always kind of felt bummed when I finished a book and knew the next one I would read had already been picked. I like being a little more free with what I'm in the mood for. So you and I will both have to wait and see what I end up reading this summer.