So I found out about this book after reading the instant classic twitter thread about a gay dude who, when he was a teenager in the '90s, created a folder of pictures of hot dudes called Beefcake on the family computer and, when asked about it by his dad, blamed his MOM. (His eventual coming out to them was not exactly a surprise.) I went to his bio and when I saw that he was an author I decided to read one of his books, and I enjoyed it!
This is kind of a classic beach read, in some ways - it's light and a bit frothy and there's a whole lot of drama but the stakes of all of the drama is never particularly high. It's about a classics professor and her family, a husband who cheated on her a year ago but has promised he's reformed, and their son, who just graduated from college and is feeling completely unmoored. She gets the chance to go back for the summer to the small island in Greece where she spent a year as a college student herself all those years ago, and when her husband and son join her there, all of them begin to discover their various interwoven secrets.
I really enjoyed this book, even though I found all of the characters to be extremely frustrating at times - this is not a story that allows people's bad behavior to go unchallenged, which is good, but it also at times becomes exhausting that basically no one is without seriously questionable behavior. However, in the end the people you want to succeed the most do, and the people who you most want to see receive their comeuppance do, and all of the characters feel extraordinarily recognizable (which may be why they feel as frustrating as they do - they are exactly as stupid as people are in reality). Sometimes you just want to read a novel where the writer really knows what they're doing, and this is definitely that.
Grade: B
This is kind of a classic beach read, in some ways - it's light and a bit frothy and there's a whole lot of drama but the stakes of all of the drama is never particularly high. It's about a classics professor and her family, a husband who cheated on her a year ago but has promised he's reformed, and their son, who just graduated from college and is feeling completely unmoored. She gets the chance to go back for the summer to the small island in Greece where she spent a year as a college student herself all those years ago, and when her husband and son join her there, all of them begin to discover their various interwoven secrets.
I really enjoyed this book, even though I found all of the characters to be extremely frustrating at times - this is not a story that allows people's bad behavior to go unchallenged, which is good, but it also at times becomes exhausting that basically no one is without seriously questionable behavior. However, in the end the people you want to succeed the most do, and the people who you most want to see receive their comeuppance do, and all of the characters feel extraordinarily recognizable (which may be why they feel as frustrating as they do - they are exactly as stupid as people are in reality). Sometimes you just want to read a novel where the writer really knows what they're doing, and this is definitely that.
Grade: B
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