Review: All Adults Here

All Adults Here by Emma Straub
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Emma Straub's All Adults Here gives the reader an all too human examination of our failings and strengths as parents, children, siblings, and friends. Astrid Strick is a widowed mother of three who is finally coming to terms with her bisexuality and her failings in mothering her children. Those children each have struggles of their own, from her perfectionist older son Eliot, to her daughter Porter who is having a child via IVF but in longterm, reckless love with a married man, to her younger son Nicky, whose daughter Cecilia lands on her grandmother's doorstep after her parents seem not to have supported her in a situation at her NYC school. This is a book about reflecting on how we could do better, of sticking up for one's truth and that of one's friends and loved ones, and most of all about forgiveness.

A #ReadWithJenna selection for the Today Show, most of the character arcs in this novel were lovely, particularly that of Cecelia and her friend August/Robin. I was occasionally so frustrated with Porter that I wanted to smack her, but I guess that was kind of Straub's point about human foibles. Porter truly embodies the Pascal quote "“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point” ("The heart has its reasons whereof reason knows nothing.") All in all this is a lovely meditation on love and forgiveness in families.

I received a digital audio copy of this novel from Penguin Books via Libro.fm in exchange for an honest review.

~ ~ ~ 

Want to buy a copy of All Adult Here from your local independent bookstore? Click HERE.

Want to buy the audiobook copy of All Adult Here and have a portion of the sale benefit your local independent bookstore? Click HERE.

Want your eBook purchase of All Adult Here to benefit independent bookstores? Click HERE.

Follow Marzie's Reads on Bloglovin'

View all my reviews on Goodreads

© Marzie's Reads 2017-2020, All Rights Reserved.