The Jetsetters
Fiction
Ballantine Books
2020
Hardcover
352
Purchased
"When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the "Become a Jetsetter" contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can't seem to find a bride; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young and she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When she wins the cruise, the family packs all their baggage--literal and figurative--and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed, and the Perkins family is forced to confront the defining choices in their lives. Can four lost adults find the peace they've been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back to each other? In the vein of The Nest and The Vacationers, Ward has created a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood to cruise--we can only hope--toward joy"--
My review:
If I'm being honest, I think my expectations for this book were set a little too high. I loved a previous novel by this author (The Same Sky) and was looking for more of the same. Sadly, while this kept me entertained while reading, its not going to leave much of a lasting impression. It's a typical family saga where the grown children all have secrets that come out when they embark on a cruise with their mother. None of the main characters were very likable, and sometimes this is done on purpose (think The Nest, which I adored!), but I think in the case of this book we were supposed to like them. My favorite character was actually the boyfriend of the son, and he has a very minor role. The thing that kept me interested and reading this book is that I have been on several cruises, and the descriptions of cruise life were fun to revisit. I also have been on a cruise where we stopped at many of the same ports as this family does. It was fun to pick out some of the landmarks talked about.
In summary, there is really nothing bad about this book, it's a light read that deals with some rather heavy topics (maybe that bothered me a bit as well?). I think if I had liked the characters more, I would have had a better experience, but that is such a subjective thing as not everyone reacts the same to various characters. It definitely was fun to relive the cruise experience!
It is always tricky to read an author's followup to a book that you loved. There's a fine balance between wanting them to do more of the same and something different.