Three friends who attended an elite liberal arts school in Maine are meeting each other at their twenty-fifth college reunion. Hope and Polly were unlikely roommates-Hope was the bubbly dorm caretaker who ran with the popular crowd, while Polly was a bohemian from New York, a scholarship student in a sea of wealth. Their friend Adam was known as a happy-go-lucky guy, but was very good at hiding his childhood traumas.
Twenty-five years later, Hope is a full-time housewife with a harried professor husband and two children, one who is compromised. She is thrilled to get out of the house for a weekend alone to rekindle old friendships. Polly is a teacher and single mother to an untethered 18-year-old who aches to live off the grid. She had no intention of revisiting bad memories, but her son wants to see his camp friend whose family lives on a nearby island, and she'll do anything to make him happy. Adam, now an environmental lawyer, lives in a cabin in the forest with his wife and sons. He is very conflicted about attending, as his wife seems to be drifting into agoraphobia after living through the pandemic. Old secrets are revealed and psychic wounds revisited as the friends confront the bubble of the college experience and its consequences in real life.
I can very easily relate to this novel as I lived in a dorm for three years. The heady freedom of living your life and making your own decisions for the first time can be intoxicating and, at the same time, might not be the correct or wise ones. Would you like to revisit your youth with the wisdom of experience-read this book to find out.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
Publication date - May 7, 2024
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