I really enjoyed this book. Weaving together the stories of Astrid, widowed and in a new relationship; her three grown-up children, who each have troubles of their own; and her grand-daughter, slung out of school for an offence that's not identified until quite late in the book, it's funny and warm-hearted, but it also has profound things to say about families, and how we so often don't really know the people closest to us, creating misunderstandings and mistakes that echo down the years.

I'm a huge fan of Anne Tyler, and this reminded me of one of hers - Emma Straub has a similar knack of creating characters who are quirky enough to be interesting, but ordinary enough to be convincing, and of observing the everyday details of their environment and their lives so beautifully that you feel you're there with them. And I love her elegant, perfectly restrained style - never a word out of place, never a pretentious turn of phrase, just clean, beautiful and witty writing.

3.5

Emma Straub is one of my favourite authors - I loved her book Modern Lovers and I’m always recommending it. When I got the chance by the publisher to read this one for review, I jumped on the opportunity.

Now I love a family drama so this one is right up my street. I really enjoyed the different characters within the book and the different storylines and subplots.

However, I felt the book tried to unpack a lot of social issues such as sexuality, adultery abortion etc and I feel like it tried to do too much and was over-ambitious and not well executed.

That being said, the writing is great and Emma does a fantastic job of fleshing out the different characters. It was an entertaining read but not Straub’s best.

Astrid witnessed an accident which makes her re-evaluate her life, her relationships and her parenting.

A fun read about family life, and whether we live up to the expectations of our parents, but also parents worrying about how they‘ve brought their kids up.

All of the characters are wonderfully drawn and I liked how different relationships were slowly revealed through the book.

I enjoyed the feeling that, as adults, we're not actually any more mature than children. In fact, Cecelia came across as the most mature person in all of this.....!

Not for me. I found Straub's writing very difficult to get into it - I've picked up one of her other books before and had a similar reaction (I think it was her debut). As some other reviewers have pointed out, the author often overwrites when working with description, I also found the plot to be a little derivative - I almost feel like I've read this book somewhere else before. I'm sure it will find its audience somewhere, but I am not that audience.

All Adults Here was a gorgeous, witty and warm portrayal of family. Astrid is a widow and Mum to three grown-up children. Now in her 70's, she is surprised to have found love again, with Birdie, her hairdresser and long-time friend. Astrid reflects on her life as a wife and mother, and her reflections on parenting were so relatable - 'Parents knew that the hardest part of parenthood was figuring out how to do the right thing twenty four hours a day, forever, and surviving all the times you failed'. As each of her grown-up children are trying to deal with the realities of life as adults, she feels that she made mistakes (because she is human), but I think the message that shines through in this book, is that it's never too late to learn and admit to being less than perfect.

Her eldest son Elliott feels that he's never been truly successful and is constantly searching for approval. Porter, the only girl and middle child is pregnant by sperm donor and conducting an affair with her childhood sweetheart. Youngest son Nicky is a weed-smoking hippy and is seen as the favourite child, but he is dealing with his guilt over not supporting his daughter Cecilia when she was going through a difficult time at school.

As each of her children reach resolution of their difficulties, Astrid moves towards a place of acceptance that she did the best she could as a mother, and it was so lovely to see this family move closer to each other after a period of distance and unresolved conflict.

A truly uplifting story of secrets, family, friendship, love and acceptance.

What a fabulous read - entertaining in the extreme!

Astrid Strick is a widow with three adult children; each of them has their own life to lead  but, to her, they will always be her kids and she worries about each of them. She tries to be involved in their lives, but the upside of them not being involved in hers means she has secrets they know nothing about. Of course, she's not the only one hiding something and the year that her granddaughter Cecilia comes to live with her is the catalyst for so many revelations . . .

This is a novel which just pulls the reader in; I had no sooner opened it when I found myself very comfortable with the setting, the characters and the wonderful dialogue. This is an ordinary family in an ordinary town about which author has written an extraordinary story. Astrid, like all of us with children, doesn't think she's done a good job as a mother - every reader can make up their own mind on that one as they work through the book. I loved everything about All Adults Here - it made me smile, laugh and, yes, wipe away a tear or two. A beautifully crafted tale by an author who must be a people watcher as her observations are so succinct.  I have no hesitation in highly recommending this novel and I'm very happy to give it five sparkling stars!

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley; this is - as always - my honest, original and unbiased review.

Unfortunately this book wasn't for me, I found it really wordy - why use one word when you can use six - and consequently quite boring. The topics that did arise seemed like a tick box list of contemporary issues that the author felt she needed to include, and I didn't manage to finish it.
Thank you to netgalley and penguin books for an advance copy of this book.

The adults in this book could not be more different! At first glance, the adults who seem to have it all together in a tick box fashion are those who are struggling with their own demons and past and those who allow themselves to ask what their heart truly desires are those who have the most freedom by the end. Straub paints her characters in technicolour with vivid honesty and I really enjoyed this book. Thanks NetGalley!

Beautifully written story about widow Astrid and her adult children. Their dynamics and thinking is so well described that I read it in one evening.

Perfect summer reading.

I really enjoyed this very well written exploration of family life and family dynamics. There are numerous themes ranging from friendship and mortality though to parental responsibly, sibling rivalry and infidelity.

Astrid Strick is 68 years old when she witnesses an accident in which her long-time adversary, Barbara Baker, is killed. Astrid realises that life it just too short and she has some unfinished business with each of her three children. She faces the fact that she might not have been the best mother and sets out to redefine her mother-child relationships. Meanwhile her children have problems of their own.

The range of idiosyncratic and rather lovely characters, all facing different challenges, makes for a very entertaining read. There is an awful lot going on this book and that was one of the things I loved about it most. A gentle humour pervades the narrative and the setting of small town America really came alive. I would really recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Michael Joseph for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

its a quirky read with plenty of issues addressed in her own way....though at times i felt my attention wandering...there are some laugh out loud moments and some series issues

but on the whole a good read

This a very enjoyable example of contemporary American fiction, looking at three generations of the same family in an amusing and moving way. Emma Straub tackles a range of themes including gay and straight marriage, transgender issues, cyberbullying and more in an entertaining and modern manner.

Sorry but this was not my type of book. I could not get into it at all. I kept persevering hoping I would start to like it but sadly that was not the case.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Set in a small town in New York state, #AllAdultsHere is contemporary fiction at it's best. It is funny, touching, insightful and has a great cast of characters. There is someone here that everyone will find to relate to, and although I have tried I can't pick out a favourite. The teenagers, the adult kids and the matriarch Astrid were all really well portrayed and touched my heart. I will certainly recommend this book to everyone as I enjoyed it immensely.
Thank you to the author, the publishers and #NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

With thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Michael Joseph. This is a story of family functionality or dysfunctionally and the ties that bind or don’t. The book starts dramatically with the death of a lady, knocked down by the school bus and this is a catalyst for change particularly for Astrid who decides to announce a new relationship to her family. In turn other family members have their own confessions and relationships are examined and renegotiated in the light of this. A transgender, a lesbian relationship, adultery and IVF pregnancy are all in the mix and treated with great sensitivity. I particularly liked the ‘coming out’ of August to his parents whilst at summer camp. ‘Careful,’ Ruth said. ‘It’s harder in a dress.’ ‘You can do it,’ John said. ‘And we’re right here, in case you fall.’ I enjoyed much of the book and particular threads - the relationship between Cecilia and August and between Wendy and Elliot provide interesting story lines. There’s a great sense of place and community. However, I found some of the writing dense and the ending seemed overly drawn out seemingly trying to resolve every relationship. I find some American novels translate less effectively and for me this is one of them.

For the second time in a matter of weeks I’ve read a book that I wouldn’t normally have picked up simply because it was well recommended by Elizabeth Strout and, for the second time in a matter of weeks, I have had an absolutely wonderful experience. Strout is clearly as good a critic as she is a writer. Emma Straub’s All Adults Here is set in the Hudson Valley small town of Clapham, a community where everyone knows everyone else and where the marketing slogan Keep Local, Shop Small really means something. It is in Clapham that Astrid Strick has brought up her family, Elliot, Porter and Nicky, all now adults grown and it is here, at the moment when the novel begins, that she recognises that her life has changed forever. What brings this revelation about is the death of Barbara Baker, a woman Astrid has never liked, but whose death she witnesses when Barbara is run over by a speeding school bus. Astrid has a secret and the accident makes her realise that the time has come to reveal that secret, initially to her family and eventually to her friends and wider acquaintances, despite being aware that her plans may well meet with opposition. However, she is not the only member of her family to be concealing things. Both of her older children, still living in Clapham, have important matters which they are keeping from the rest of the family for fear of the consequences and much of the novel is concerned with the difficulty that parents and children have not only in communicating with each other but also, perhaps more fundamentally, in understanding each other and in providing the support and encouragement that is needed when the going gets tough.

This is most obvious, initially at least, in respect of what has happened to Nicky’s  daughter, Cecelia, as a result of an incident in her New York school. Confided in by her friend Katherine, who is involved in a relationship with an older man which is clearly abusive, Cecelia, concerned for her classmate well-being, tells those that she expects to be responsible and supportive adults. However, in the aftermath of the fury that erupts as Katherine turns against her, Nicky and his wife, Juliette, fail to come up with the backing Cecelia so desperately needs.

The trouble was that people always told Cecelia things, and that she wasn’t a lawyer or a therapist. She was just a kid and so were her friends, but she seem to be the only one who knew it. The trouble was that her parents had given up at the first sign of trouble.
As a result, the decision has been taken to send Cecelia to live with her grandmother and complete her final year at Junior High in Clapham. When she needed her parents most, they simply weren’t there for her. Straub, however, is very careful not to be too condemnatory in respect of either the behaviour of Nicky and Juliette or that of Astrid who, as the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly clear has not really provided the support her children needed a generation earlier.  Being a parent is difficult. This is the message that comes through time after time after time. And there is no manual, you have to learn as you go.  Is there any wonder that so many people get it wrong.

If there is one set of parents who do seem to be well on the way to getting it right it is Ruth and John Sullivan. We meet them first as they fetch their 13-year-old son, August, back from Summer Camp. August is dreading going back into eighth grade, knowing that it’s going to be no better than fifth grade, sixth grade or seventh grade was. He has no friends at Clapham Junior High and only ever feels that he is fully able to be himself amongst the people he meets up with each year during the summer vacation. For August also has a secret and it is one that he feels certain will earn him at best ridicule and at worse abuse, should it become known. Ruth and John however do you seem to have an understanding of what is troubling their child and they certainly do their best to offer support as, with Cecelia‘s help, August find the courage to show the world, or perhaps more importantly, his classmates, who he really is.

I’m conscious that I may be making this sound as if it’s a really serious and heart searching novel, one that is searing to read, and it is serious, and at times it really touches your heart, but searing it is not; it is an absolute delight. I found myself trying to eke it out because I didn’t want to leave either the world that Straub has created nor the lightness of touch with which she explores the difficulties that the Strick family go through.  And there are some wonderful passages of writing. When I looked back through my notebook I found I had copied out paragraph after paragraph of ideas that just rang so true and were expressed so well. I have already read some very good books this year, but so far All Adults Here tops them all and I can’t recommend it too highly.


With grateful thanks to Michael Joseph and NetGalley for the review copy.

This was a really charming and clever read. Straub did a remarkable job of making these characters feel real and their stories relatable.
Would recommend.

This is a wry, warm-hearted look at a multi-generational family now that the adults have grown up and moved out of the family home. Despite the light-hearted tone of the book it asks serious questions of the reader, such as when do children finally become adults, and when does a parent finally have the right to their own life?
The novel focuses on the Strick family: Astrid, her three children, their spouses and her grandchildren of varying ages and is set in a small liberal town in upstate New York. It flits between different Strick voices, and Emma Straub manages to capture each person’s unique point of view and considerations.
Making decisions for oneself and following your own path is a big theme of this novel. All of the characters are dedicated, in some way, to finding themselves, even if it’s not what the others would choose for them. Their relationship with each other is also put under the microscope – in any family children who have exactly the same upbringing will of course see it differently. They ‘saw each other when their mother told them to’ and ‘they weren’t particularly nice to each other; were any adult siblings?’
Astrid’s husband, Russell Strick had died when his children were teens and in early adulthood and Astrid has spent years feeling sad that the future she was expecting (and felt she deserved) has been ripped away from her. However, at the beginning of the novel, she’s at the point where she’s ready to share her current relationship with her family and this is taken better by some of her children than others.
Doing the right thing and standing up for yourself is something that Cecelia, Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter, has found doesn’t always end up as expected. After alerting the adults in her life to her friend’s inappropriate online relationship with a grown man, she’s been shunned by that friend and become the subject of mean girls’ scorn at her school. She’s subsequently sent to stay with her grandmother by her parents to get her away from the situation, whilst they don’t realise that the internet can never be escaped. Cecelia’s general lovability leads her to make true friends in Clapham, not least with the gloriously creative August. However, because she’s authentic people still tend to confide in her and this leads to difficulties wherever she is.
Straub has plenty of sympathy for Wendy, Elliot’s wife, who has given up working as a kick-ass corporate lawyer to raise her twins. Being rigid with their routine is the only way she can deal with the chaos the twins being to her life. The only time she gets to herself is when the twins are napping, and this means that she tries to impose this routine on others in the family.
All the characters have an interesting back story and are well-drawn. It feels as if the author really enjoyed getting to know them, and wants to present them, flaws and all to the reader. There’s no censoriousness, even when the characters make mistakes, or unintentionally hurt the others. There’s a sense of recognition which gradually flows into the characters and allows them to accept themselves, their situations and each other.

All Adults Here is a novel that explores the similarities, differences and difficulties within modern relationships and, more explicitly, intra-family relationships.

I’ve hesitated in writing this review straight away, deciding to let my thoughts percolate a little as I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it.

There’s no denying that Straub writes well and has tackled all manner of issues that many writers avoid - including LGBTQ+, bullying, fear of failure as a parent, loss, infidelity, grief (the list goes on). However, other than August, I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters - and I’m still not entirely sure why that is. It may well be because they are full of flaws - as we all are, or perhaps there are just many characters, all of whom are essential protagonists in their own right, thus not allowing me to get to know any of them enough. Or perhaps something else...

I am really pleased, however, that I’ve allowed myself the time to digest and reflect as what is striking and what has remained with me after finishing the book is the sense that as teenagers, young adults, parents and older adults, we are still learning every day: Learning how to be better people; learning to be less judgemental and learning how to love and be loved.

This reminds me of a quote by Michelangelo which I see at work every day - Ancora Imparo - I’m still learning. If nothing else, this book is a lovely reminder that we are all still learning. For this alone, I would recommend you read All Adults Here.

Thank you NetGalley and PenguinUK for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An accident makes Astrid re-evaluate her life and her parenting. The brevity of life makes her decide that she need to say what she wants and go for it. I liked the outset of the book but for me it didn't fulfil its potential. I feel like it introduced each element of society in order to tick boxes, so the Gay/ lesbian/ Bi / Trans. The daughter who rebels against the world in order to meet it her way, The unfaithful husband and the sweet but ultimately confused teen. It all seemed a bit "Twee" and glossed over rather than giving one element a substantive narrative. I think it had potential but failed to realise it. I would read necessarily dismiss the author to my nevermore pile, there were parts i enjoyed I just needed a thread pulling to tighten the story line