Read by Helen Laser
5 hours, 26 minutes
Published October 2025 by HarperCollins
Publisher’s Summary:
If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry—and relate.)
Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky’s widowed father, has moved in.
It all couldn’t be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them—and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won’t affect them at all.
With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people—no matter how much you love them—are not always exactly who you want them to be.
My Thoughts:
Apologies for no picture of the book. Blogger is not playing nice since I uploaded the most recent software update. I thought I had it figured out on Sunday, at least a work around; apparently not.
“It’s like spending hours with the friend who sees your mess and loves you more for it.” - Alison Espach, Wedding People
Newman's Sandwich was one of my favorite books of 2024 so I was thrilled to see that she had written a follow up. While Wreck didn't quite measure up to Sandwich for me, it's still a wonderful read. Rocky is very much the same woman I so related to in that first book. This time it was all about living with anxiety - the constant worrying about everyone you care about, the constant concern about everything else happening in the world, and the constant thought that every medical symptom you have is definitely something more serious.
Smart, quirky, sad – Newman knows what it’s like to live life with anxiety and how easy it is to lose yourself in it. This time, Rocky's anxiety is justified.
The accident raises the question of how to separate a person you love from the work that their company (and, by extension, your loved one) does. And the weird rash that Rocky begins experiencing turns into one of the situations where medical experts remain baffled as more and more symptoms begin piling up.
Add to that worry about Willa's crippling anxiety and Rocky's 92-year-old father's decision to move out of the guest room behind their house and back into his own home alone. I could just feel the weight of it all and how hard it would be to carry all of it.
I highly recommend this one. But first, read Sandwich. And maybe talk your book club into reading both of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment